Galway councillors appear set to elect the city's first Green Party mayor tonight.
Green Party councillor Niall Ó Brolcháin is so confident of support from a Labour/Fine Gael/Green Party alliance on Galway City Council that he has already booked the celebration venue.
However, that alliance has been showing some serious signs of strain recently over the issue of meeting times for city council - and that time is traditionally set at tonight's gathering.
Cllr Catherine Connolly (Labour) - the first to be elected mayor under the three-year-old pact - believes that meetings should be held in the evening, and says this was part of the three-party agreement. Any move to bring forward meetings to 3pm would exclude certain councillors, she believes.
However, Fine Gael's three councillors deny that there was such agreement under the pact. In a statement, Cllrs John Mulholland, Padráig Conneely and outgoing mayor Brian Walsh said that Labour Party members had indicated to them that they would not support their party's candidate for any future year if they sought to change meeting times.
"We are aware of the consequences of such action, and are prepared to adhere to our agreement," they said.
If the alliance survives, and the Green Party gets its first citizen this evening, Fine Gael and Labour will both have one more turn in the one-year post.
