Before I was elected to Dublin City Council I worked for an organisation that was not too dissimilar to it in make-up. We had a secretariat with an executive on one side, and members on the other. The members were there to make the big decisions, to steer policy and to act in an oversight role.

As part of the secretariat, we put transparency at a premium – in everything we did: budgets, policy, contracts, procurement; there was not a piece of information about the organisation, a public one, that a member could not attain. We did this to enfranchise members, co-opt them in to the process so that they would be more interested and involved. While they mightn’t always agree with everything we were doing at least they knew what we were doing and why.

I joined the Council with a personal bias against the proposed incinerator for Poolbeg. I’m from Sandymount, I still run along the causeway regularly, and so my opposition against such a big facility in my part of town was there from the get go. It was visceral, instinctive. Arguments relating to capacity, location cost etc, however sound, came after the fact.

And yet I walked on to the Council with an open mind. I was here to govern responsibly for the City and if a compelling case could be made in favour, if I could be convinced that this was the best way forward for Dublin, then I would support it, confident that I was doing the right thing for everyone and not just pandering to my own personal and local biases.

It has been more than 12 months since I was elected. The incinerator is not yet built. And nothing that I have read, heard or discussed in that time has given me any confidence that this is the right way forward. The complete lack of transparency regarding the contract is astounding. Are we as public representatives not to be trusted? To whom does the City Council answer if not us? Certainly not the people and it appears not even the government.

The lack of clarity, to the extent of secrecy, surrounding the incinerator contract is grossly undermining people’s faith in their city council. There have already been court cases, which have come out negatively for the Council. There have been articles in the paper making claims, which if founded, are very damaging to the Council and completely undermine the process to date. The poison from this episode may well infect others.

What’s going on here? Why don’t I as a Councillor have the full facts surrounding a facility that is to be built in my City and in my area, which I have responsibility for? A facility that is extremely important to the future of the City and country (in one way or another), that has cost serious money to date, and, if all is to be believed, could potentially land tax payers with an open-ended liability for the next 25 years if certain waste targets are not met.

Something is rotten in the State of Dublin. And I’m not happy about it.