187 motions tabled by City Council with Greens 15 times more likely to propose topics for discussion

In the seven full council meetings held between June 2025 and January 2026, there were 187 motions tabled by the 31 Cork city councillors, new analysis has shown, with one party 15 times more likely to propose topics for discussion than another.

It comes as Monday’s council meeting saw lively debate on several international issues including the Mercosur deal, Venezuela and Palestine.

Volume of Motions Raised

Analysis of full council meetings agendas shows that Labour’s Peter Horgan tabled the most motions with 18, followed by the Green Party’s Honore Kamegni, 16, while the party’s other two councillors, Oliver Moran and Dan Boyle, tabled 15 each.

Labour’s Ciara O’Connor and John Maher tabled nine and eight motions each, while the Social Democrats’ sole councillor Niamh O’Connor tabled 12.

Sinn Féin councillors also tabled a lot of motions, with the party’s Kenneth Collins having 13 on the agenda in the seven-month period, Michelle Gould having 12, Joe Lynch having 11 and Fiona Kerins having four.

Independent councillors were mixed – Albert Deasy had ten motions tabled, Kieran McCarthy had five and Paudie Dineen had one, as did Independent Ireland’s Noel O’Flynn. The Worker’s Party’s Ted Tynan and People Before Profit – Solidarity’s Brian McCarthy, who sit in a technical group with the independents, had six motions tabled each.

As seen in the previous analysis conducted by The Echo, councillors from government parties tabled much fewer motions. Fine Gael’s Shane O’Callaghan was an outlier, tabling nine motions, followed by Fianna Fáil’s Dr John Sheehan with five and Seán Martin with two.

Des Cahill, Damian Boylan and Joe Kavanagh (Fine Gael) as well as Tony Fitzgerald and Margaret McDonnell (Fianna Fáil) each tabled one motion, while Fine Gael’s Gary O’Brien and Fianna Fáil’s Terry Shannon, Colm Kelleher, Mary Rose Desmond and Terry Coleman have not tabled any.

Fianna Fáil’s Fergal Dennehy has also not tabled any motions, but he was elected Lord Mayor in June 2025, meaning he acts as administrator the meetings.

Alliance Group Most Active

The figures mean that overall, the seven councillors in the Progressive Alliance Group (Labour, Greens and Social Democrats) proposed an average of 14 motions each, Sinn Féin councillors asked ten, Fine Gael’s asked two and Fianna Fáil’s asked one over the seven council meetings.

The Green Party had the highest proportion of questions per councillor, with data showing a Green party councillor was 15 times more likely than a Fianna Fáil councillor to table a motion.

The data is largely in line with the findings of a previous analysis by The Echo for the first five months of 2025, which found that The Progressive Alliance had 116 motions discussed in a full council meeting, followed by 30 Sinn Féin motions, 26 from the Independents and Others grouping, 22 from Fine Gael, and nine from Fianna Fáil.

Fianna Fáil’s Colm Kelleher, who also had not had any motions heard at full council meetings during the previously analysed period, said at the time that the motions he puts in are resolved at local area committee meetings, because they are things the council has a direct say in.

He said that his motions are “bread and butter stuff” like road resurfacing, getting a lollipop person for a local school, and that those are the issues he is contacted about most regularly, saying “my motions may be fairly boring from a news perspective, but they’re what local government is all about”.

However, Labour’s Peter Horgan, who had tabled the most motions during that period also, said he was elected to raise issues that are of concern to his ward, the city and wider societal issues also “and I make no apology in doing so”.

Motions that come forward to full council have to come through either a local area committee or a strategic policy committee first.

Each councillor sits on the local area committee for their own ward, and Cork City Council also has six Strategic Policy Committees (SPCs) that guide policy on key areas like housing, environment, economy, culture, transport, and international relations, with a different group of councillors sitting on each.

The only motions which can be put straight onto the agenda are non-statutory motions, which relate to issues the council doesn’t have a direct power over, such as national or international issues or concerns relating to a government department or state body.

Recent Council Meeting

Monday night’s council meeting had a shorter-than-usual agenda, as no LACs and less SPCs than usual had been held during the four weeks since the last full council meeting due to Christmas holidays.

However, while it was looking like the meeting could be finished at a record breaking 6.30pm, a lengthy discussion about non-statutory motions then ensued.

Independent Ireland’s Noel O’Flynn had a motion asking Irish MEPs and TDs to vote against the Mercosur trade deal, which he said “has the potential to decimate the Irish beef industry through cheap and inferior imports from South American countries”.

He received support from councillors of all parties and all sides of the political scale, though some councillors sought to distance themselves from “isolationist” commentary from others when the motion devolved into debating the trustworthiness of the EU.

A motion by Fine Gael’s Damian Boylan on “safeguarding Irish democracy from foreign interference” also sparked debate.

There were also multiple motions relating to Palestine – Sinn Féin’s Kenneth Collins had a motion in about the Occupied Territories Bill, suggesting the council writes to government ministers, calling on them to include a ban on trade in services in the bill.

Social Democrats’ Niamh O’Connor asked that the council write to the Taoiseach to express concern that Irish charities’ mobile maternity units, intended for use in Gaza, are not being allowed entry. 

Labour’s Peter Horgan similarly proposed writing to the Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs to criticise decisions not to allow medical organisations enter the country.

Fine Gael’s Shane O’Callaghan had a motion on the recent US military operation in Venezuela, with Mr O’Callaghan saying that if Ireland did not speak out against this, it could be in danger, and criticising the response to the operation by EU governments including Ireland’s.

He quoted from the poem First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.”

The motion inspired a lively debate, with one councillor describing the actions of the Trump administration as “thuggish gangsterism” and another horrified by the slander of the President of the United States and saying the administration had acted admirably to remove an “illegitimate” leader and prevent the flow of drugs into the US.

Mr O’Callaghan told The Echo after the meeting: “The invasion sets a very dangerous precedent. If they decided they don’t like the Irish government, what’s to stop them doing it again and again?

“As a public rep, not all issues raised with us are local issues, often they’re national or international and there is merit in us raising those concerns with national government. 

"It was a fragrant breach of intentional law, and Cork city councillors, as representatives of the people of Cork, writing to the government asking them to properly condemn the action.”