By Dara Bradley

Every cent earned by City Councillors in salary, expenses and allowances will be thrown open to public inspection on a yearly basis for the first time ever ... but City Hall officials’ earnings will not face the same scrutiny.

Galway City Council has agreed that elected members will have to put all details of their salary, travel expenses, meal allowances and expenses paid for Mayoral allowances, memberships of committees and Boards and so on, up on a dedicated website, every year, at the end of the financial year.

But efforts to compel the City Manager and senior City Council officials and directors of services to follow suit, proved unsuccessful.

Currently, members of the public must submit a Freedom of Information request in order to access Councillors’ expenses, which can often be costly and time consuming.

Cllr Terry O’Flaherty (Ind) had originally proposed that the expenses be brought into the public domain every three months but this was not agreed. Cllr O’Flaherty had also proposed that allowances and expenses received by elected members from ‘quangos’ and semi-state bodies should be made available but the Procedures Committee of the Council deemed that this was not “practical”.

Instead it was agreed that the names of these bodies will be set out on the website alongside the list of expenses, salary and allowances received.Cllr O’Flaherty proposed the motion, which was accepted at last night’s meeting, “in the interest of transparency and accountability to the tax payer”.

Cllr Pádraig Conneely said it was “wrong” for expenses to be made available online because people can already get the information through Freedom of Information.

It was also agreed at the meeting that the Deputy Mayor of Galway City would be given a ‘Deputy Mayor Allowance’ of €6,000 per annum. But after concerns were raised that now was not the right time to be bringing in additional perks it was agreed that this additional allowance would come from the existing budget for Councillors’ expenses and would be generated from reduced expenses for the 15 other Councillors, and not additional expenditure.

Read more in today's Connacht Sentinel