Labour Cllr. Frank McBrearty Jr said that Donegal Mayor, Fianna Fáil Cllr. Brendan Byrne, has broken the trust in the council chamber by allowing a quorum of 10 Fianna Fáil councillors to adopt the 2010 budget while the remaining 19 were in a meeting down the hall.
He said that as mayor, or chairperson of the council, Mayor Byrne should remain impartial. "I would describe now Brendan Byrne the same as (former Ceann Comhairle] John O'Donohue – there's not much of a difference between both of them," he said.
"I should have had more sense with everything I learned over 14 years," Cllr. McBrearty said. But he said he had given his faith to the mayor. "He took that faith from me anyway."
The Labour councillor said he believed the mayor had a responsibility to notify the remaining councillors – who were discussing proposals for funding a cut in commercial rates – that the meeting had reconvened.
"There is no honour in what he did and he has to live with it," Cllr. McBrearty said.
This was Cllr. McBrearty's first budget meeting and he said he was led to believe meetings would be adjourned and reconvened several times to allow for negotiations among parties, as they had been in the past.
"Dirty tricks politics is what it is," Cllr. McBrearty said. He said the move will affect the way he sees the chair.
"He has left no trust within the chamber," he said. "Every time we go to the toilet or go out for a bit of fresh air we have to be watching our back in case the mayor tries to pass something without us. I wouldn't trust him now as far as I could throw him."
