Eunuchs!

The first Monday of the month is when the regular City Council meeting takes place and when we deal with the routine business of the city. Lots of the items on the agenda are on decisions that have already been made within the local areas and require, from a legal perspective, the full City Council to endorse the decision.

We also deal with motions. Any Councillor can put down a motion on the agenda, typically the motions would deal with an issue of concern specific to their own electoral area or a wider policy issue the Councillor was looking to change.

We also have a mechanism for submitting emergency motions. Any councillor can submit one, our own guidelines is that the emergency motion is valid if the issue is time sensitive and has something to do with the city. The latter criteria has a very flexible interpretation.

Earlier today my party Colleague Daithi Doolan has submitted a motion on the situation in Gaza. The motion condemned Israels attack on Gaza and called for the Israeli Ambassador to meet with the political parties in the council.

The motion was written in a way that would garner cross party support. Fine Gael,with the exception on their maverick Councillor Bill Tormey, were happy to vote for it.

Amazingly, and particularly given both Micheal Martin and Brian Cowen made very strong and clear statements on the situation, the Fianna Fáil group objected to the motion. Their group leader, Julia Carmichael made the most vacuous speech of the debate highlighting little more than a dearth of the most basic of knowledge on the Middle East. The Fianna Fáil Lord Mayor wanted to amend the motion but in a way that it was so wishy washy "we all want peace" as to be completely meaningless.

In my opinion Dublin City Council needed to be recorded as condemning Israel and pledging solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Now if Fianna Fails ignorance wasn't bad enough we then had to be subjected to the "there's two sides to this" from the Labour Party and a perverse rant from one of their most dislikeable councillors, on both a personal and political level, ex official member Eric Byrne.

He objected to the motion as it did not mention Hamas, he failed to offer any suggested amendments but was clear he was going to vote against the only one on the table.

An amendment put forward by Andrew Montague was accepted, it called on Hamas to cease firing rockets and targeting Israeli - it was specific, related to a particular action by a particular group and so I was happy to include the amendment.

However due to the numbers the motion was again amended into a corrupt one. One that equalise both the violence and the cause onto each side and calls on the UN to do something. I can't recall the exact words but its contemptible rubbish.

I found the whole process depressing, we had the queer situation that the local representatives for the Fianna Fail and Labour party were objecting to the wording of a motion which in its original state was less stern than what either of their respective parties leaders had said!

I've said it before, there are 52 people elected to Dublin City Council, at least half are social misfits and insecure losers. By randomly selecting 52 people from the phone book we would have a councillor that is much more grounded, psychologically balanced and informed.

Tonight, more than any other night exemplified what a collection of ignorant, egotistical cowardly misfits are attracted into Irish politics.