A dispute over how the public can contact their local representatives has intensified in Wicklow, with councillors accusing the council of restricting access to elected members after personal email addresses were removed from the local authority’s website.
The row came to a head at the September meeting of Wicklow County Council, where councillors from across the chamber backed a proposal seeking to allow members to publish the email addresses they believe work best for communicating with constituents.
However, senior officials insisted they will not reinstate personal email addresses, arguing that doing so would expose both councillors and the council to significant cyber-security and data protection risks.
The motion, proposed by Cllr Stephen Stokes and seconded by Cllr Peter Stapleton, stated that members “express concern at the unilateral removal of their preferred email addresses from the Wicklow County Council website” and insisted that councillors “must be permitted to interact with members of the public in the way that they deem best serves the community”.
In presenting the motion, Cllr Stokes said the issue had evolved over months, but remained rooted in the lack of consultation.
“Emails seem to be updated and changed without any notice to us as far as I can recall,” he said.
While acknowledging improvements to the council’s official email system and praising the IT team, he argued that councillors must retain the ability to choose the communication tools that work best for them.
“We need to trust public representatives to communicate with members of the community… this includes being able to advertise what is the best way to reach councillors.”
Cllr Stapleton echoed that view, noting that personal mobile numbers are already publicly listed. “For me it’s kind of, there’s no real difference,” he said.
“My mobile phone is publicly available on the council website. It’s a personal mobile… it is quite similar to the way I would interact with them via my own personal email.”
He added that recent upgrades to Microsoft 365 had made the official system more usable, but did not eliminate the need for flexibility.
Other councillors raised practical difficulties. Cllr Paul O’Brien said he could no longer copy text from council emails into WhatsApp messages, forcing him to forward material to his personal account — “probably counterintuitive to what we are trying to do here”. Several members indicated they had experienced similar issues.
Cllr Tom Fortune asked whether councillors could add personal branding or logos to their official email signatures, prompting officials to say they would examine the request.
The executive’s position was set out in a detailed written response from director of services Brian Gleeson, which emphasised the scale of cyber-security threats facing public bodies.
“One of the main protection measures put in place by Wicklow County Council to counter threats by cyber actors is to provide official council email accounts to council staff and elected members,” the response stated.
It warned that conducting official or sensitive correspondence outside the council’s protected environment “creates significant risk”, noting that personal accounts lack monitoring, incident response capability, VIP protection, malicious email filtering and integration with cyber‑security training.
Mr Gleeson reiterated those points during the meeting, citing recent cyberattacks on national bodies including the Health Service Executive (HSE).
“Cyber threats are probably the biggest risk to any organisation at the moment… we can’t compromise on security,” he said.
He acknowledged that the council had failed to explicitly inform members that personal emails would be removed from the website, calling it “an oversight”, but maintained that reinstating them would be unsafe.
He also stressed councillors’ obligations under GDPR, saying elected members are data controllers and must protect personal information they receive.
“God forbid there was a breach within one of your non Wicklow County Council email addresses, we could not respond,” he said.
Cllr Malachai Duddy challenged the executive’s reasoning, arguing that constitutional privilege in communications between public representatives and constituents had not been considered.
“It has been established that communications between TDs and their constituents are constitutionally protected,” he said, adding that councillors likely enjoy similar protection.
He warned that delays or blocks in communication could breach constitutional rights.
“All I want is an email of my choice to be placed on the Wicklow County Council website,” he said.
“I’m happy that official correspondence between the council and myself should go through a Wicklow County Council email address, but I would like to be able to post an email address of my choice… to allow constituents to communicate with me.”
The debate culminated in a procedural clash. After discussion concluded, Cllr Stokes asked for the motion to be formally passed.
“If you mean will the personal email addresses be put back on the website then no,” Mr Gleeson responded.
Cllr Stokes clarified that he was asking for the motion itself to be adopted.
Chief executive Emer O’Gorman intervened, stating that “members can’t instruct the executive to do something that would endanger the functionality of the organisation.”
She said the motion could be passed, but added: “Whether we can take action on foot of that motion is another thing altogether.”
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme