Vol. 546 No. 1
151 Dr. Upton asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government if he will revise his answer to Parliamentary Question No. 236 of 27 November 2001 to allow members of the public attend local authority meetings from January 2002. [31348/01]
As stated in reply to Question No. 236 of 27 November, the Local Government Act, 2001, will confer a statutory right of public attendance at meetings of the full council. However, the Act requires local authorities to adopt new standing orders in order to give full effect to the new provisions dealing generally with local authority meetings and proceedings. It is not realistic that local authorities would have new standing orders drafted, presented to their elected councils for consideration and passed by the councils by January 2002, and for this reason the new provisions have been scheduled to come into operation in April 2002.
While there is currently no explicit statutory right of access to local authority meetings for the public at present, in practice the public generally have access to meetings of local authorities and various arrangements are in place locally to facilitate their attendance. Pending mobilisation of the procedures under the 2001 Act I would encourage local authorities to continue to provide reasonable access to meetings by the public.
Question No. 152 answered with Question No. 11.
