At the Kildare County Council meeting on Monday 28th July, I made a call for live online streaming of all future council meetings. I tabled the motion requesting that the council explore streaming meetings of the council live over the web and requested that both district level and full council meetings should be accessible.

My view would be that any meeting where a public gallery exists should then be open to live streaming. The technology is there to do it and it’s a basic thing. Council meetings are still held during the day time which precludes a lot of people from attending. This proposal brings transparency and accessibility to local government.

I believe this would be a very positive step in the interest of opening up the chamber and bringing government closer to the citizen. People are entitled to watch the reps they elected perform and to hear issues that matter to them debated.

I also feel there is a need to rebuild trust between politicians and the public and this would be a very positive step. It also preserves the integrity of council meetings as there can only ever be one version of the truth for all to see. I would like to also acknowledge my independent colleague Cllr. Joanne Pender, who tabled a very similar motion at the same meeting and we spoke in support of each other’s motions on the day.

A number of technical, legal and financial consideration were raised at council and the motion has now been referred to protocol committee for analysis and further debate.