Petition to Kilkenny County Council:
In the interests of transparency, accountability, democracy, citizen engagement and as an opportunity to see councillors at work, we, citizens of Kilkenny, petition you to:

Fully transcribe all council meetings, and make complete transcribed minutes and the meeting's agenda available to the public on-line and in hard copy format:

Live stream council meetings in full on the council’s web site, and archived on-line, in keeping with best practice as adopted by other local authorities.
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Kilkenny Council consists of 24 councillors who meet at least once a month and make decisions that affect every citizen of the city and county. They make decisions on housing, services, roads and development. They decide on what to build, or not build and on where to build it. They choose and vote on how your household tax, rates and charges will be spent.

It is surprising then, to hear of some elected members asleep in meetings, laughing through housing crisis presentations, missing important meetings and voting on crucial matters without having read up on the details in advance.

In the interests of transparency and accountability, Kilkenny citizens need to be able to see how the council members they elected are interacting and voting on public matters. Council members are there to serve the public so there should be no barrier to seeing them serve - for their sake as well as ours.

If meetings are transcribed, live streamed and recorded, then the citizens can engage more in local government, see how their democratically elected councillors work for them and vote accordingly. For democracy, for transparency, for fairness and justice.

We are sure that all hardworking, committed councillors will support this proposal, as it will give all citizens the opportunity to fully engage with a less visible dimension of the role of the councillor and council executive.