Council vote to suspend member of public from meetings

Elected members of Longford Town Council have unanimously agreed to ban a member of the public from all of its future local authority meetings for six months.

Councillors ratified the call to suspend local architect Liam Madden after Town Mayor Cllr Paul Connell opened last week’s meeting by deferring standing orders.

The move was made almost a year after an incident occurred inside the council’s chamber which caused then Fine Gael Cllr James Keogh to question his own attendance at future meetings.

Town Mayor Paul Connell raised the matter at the meeting and proposed the suspension of Mr Madden.

“After what an individual did some months back, a man known to me as one Liam Madden, I would like to propose we suspend standing orders to consider suspending him from coming in (to meetings) for at least six months at which time we can review it,” said Cllr Connell.

For more on this story, see next Wednesday’s Longford Leader.