Last night’s Dublin City Council meeting was Firework Central. The meat was in a postmortem of The Big Freeze in the city. Dublin City Council live webcast their meetings.

It’s quite clear that many councillors had no clue what was happening in the city last week. Time and time again, councillors recounted how they attempted to contact parts of the essential services infrastructure of the city, but those calls were lost in the ether under a tonne of phone calls from the general public.

The biggest alarm bell rang, however, when City Manager John Tierney admitted that one of phone lines added to respond to calls from Dublin residents was installed but not activated. All a bit blushworthy especially when seen in the backdrop of the city bringing extra people in over the weekend to answer those calls. They were hardly filing their nails, but what a mess!

A brief moment of levity was supplied by Sinn Fein’s Criona Ni Dhalaigh who admitted she was screaming at the telly when the Minister of Snow popped up.

The aftermath of the cold snap is still with us. Water is still off in many parts of the city. And despite Tierney’s assertion that 95-97% (that quickly changed to up to 95%) of all refuse has been collected by the city, many parts of Dublin are still stockpiling rubbish. Interesting to note when one sees their neighbours’ private bin collection company able to traverse their streets and pick up their rubbish!

Another interesting development was Cllr Mannix Flynn addressed the Council bringing forth allegations that public housing allocations were corrupt.

Flynn made several references to an independent and confidential report that prove these allegations and was given ample room to voice his charges. Councillors vigourously denied his allegations, pointing out that some housing decisions might seem unfair until those cases were examined thoroughly. Councillors had not seen Flynn’s evidence prior to the meeting. I wonder will the public get to see Flynn’s evidence too?

Photo: Dreamstime

Willie O’Dea was on this evening’s Drivetime to address the deficit of Government response to the national cold snap. Besides, washing his hands of involvement in the salting and sanding of roads. It is a matter of local government he said, after all, unless of course, one looks up the Office of Emergency Planning – an office that lies within the remit of O’Dea and clearly points the responsibility needs to be taken up by central government.

A link from the website of the OEP leads site of the Department of Health and Children and the Framework of Major Emergency Management. The report cites that a Major Emergency needs to be called. A Major Emergency is defined as:

… any event which, usually with little or no warning, causes or threatens death or injury, serious disruption of essential services or damage to property, the environment or infrastructure beyond the normal capabilities of the principal emergency services in the area in which the event occurs, and requirest he activation of specific additional procedures and the  mobilisation of additional resources to ensure an effective, co-ordinated response.

This is in stark contrast to the National Emergency Response Committee that met for the first time earlier today to formulate a response to the worsening weather conditions. So, why has a Major Emergency not been called and not done days ago?

O’Dea also said that Government had recently become aware of the problem.  Drivetime were good enough to replay a days old weather forecast to help him out. All this despite The Big Freeze biting out national noses for over a fortnight! Hope he has his snow boots on, he’s well know for stomping the streets when he’s in Limerick!