Plan to restrict freedom of Mayo press must be strongly resisted

The newly-formed Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Alliance on Mayo County Council would need to be very wary of a proposal to exclude the local media from covering certain committee meetings of the authority.

A recommendation has been made that meetings of the council’s six strategic policy committees should be held without the press being in attendance.

The move has been mooted on the basis that such committees would better operate to their potential by not having journalists present.

This is based, apparently, on the assumption that committee members would have the scope to tease out issues in an open and frank manner without the prospect of making headlines in the following week’s local newspapers.

Which, of course, begs the question: Why express a view at a meeting if it’s not worth expressing in the first place?

While misguided senior officials in the Department of Local Government may see merit in the suggestion, which has been dispatched down the line to chief executives of the nation’s county councils, it is certainly not a road councillors should agree to go down.

Because, essentially, it is a step in the wrong direction in terms of preserving the values of local democracy, values which are so important to elected representatives themselves in terms of being fully aware of the information they need to make informed decisions.

So, in effect, they, too, would be silenced if this diktat is adopted in any shape or form.

What officialdom should be more concerned about is ensuring that those appointed to serve on these strategic policy committees actually attend the meetings on a consistent basis rather than the chair having to ring around beforehand to ensure a quorum is reached.

Unlike some of its members, a representative from the local press always turns up, a clear demonstration that the fourth estate in this county takes its job very seriously.

The focus now turns on the aforementioned FF/FG Alliance to ensure that this proposal is firmly rejected as emphatically as it deserves to be.

While some of the early utterances on the matter were not entirely reassuring, the hope is that sense will prevail.

In fairness to the leader of the independent technical grouping, Councillor Michael Kilcoyne, nobody has been left in any doubt about its unequivocal opposition to the move.

Now Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, in their best interests, must do the same.