The city’s Mayor has collected enough signatures to schedule an emergency session of Galway city council, while calls are growing for a separate, public meeting to discuss rebranding the local authority.
Publican Fergus McGinn – whose online campaign first brought widespread attention to the council’s plans to scrap its iconic two-decade-old ‘G’ motif – says several Galway TDs and councillors, past and present, are suggesting he organise a non-partisan, mass meeting on the controversial rebrand for the public to attend.
Meanwhile, Mayor Helen Ogbu says she is concerned that an emergency council meeting she called after submitting the signatures of six sitting councillors, as per the local authority’s standing orders, has been downgraded to a “workshop” next Wednesday, where elected members will be unable to submit motions, and the media may be excluded.
“I want to know why the city manager appears to have performed a u-turn last week in relation to the council’s new branding strategy,” the Labour councillor said. “He told us he would ‘pause, take a breath and listen’ to feedback from staff and stakeholders on the [shortlisted] logos, but then went ahead and [advertised] the chosen design,” she said.
“I think this new branding is totally unnecessary, and people didn’t know [the council] would also get rid of the old [logo],” says McGinn. “I was highlighting it in terms of an unnecessary expenditure at a time when there’s talk of raising commercial rates by 15 per cent. This will not cost €28,000 in the end – that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said the owner of McGinn’s Hop House in Woodquay.
The Galway Advertiser exclusively revealed the city council’s chosen new logo on its frontpage last week. It takes the form of a decapitated, lower-case, seanchló-style ‘g’, merged with a Fáinne for Irish proficiency, floating above a stylised hull of the ship which has graced the city’s coat of arms for five centuries.
Photos of the frontpage of the Advertiser were circulated online before bundles of newspapers arrived in the city, early last Thursday morning, and the story has been carried in the national press and airwaves since.
Online sleuths have flooded social media with images of corporate logos almost identical to the city council’s new monogram which has appeared on all digital communications from City Hall since last week.
These images of similar, open-loop, lower case ‘g’ designs range from the familiar G Hotel logo prominently displayed outside its Dublin Road entrance, to Belgian retail merchandisers, a British vegetable delivery outfit, and a brand of Mexican running shoes.
Some wits have likened the new logo to an open toilet seat, while others have mocked up satirical replacements festooned with symbols pertaining to some of the city’s perennial gripes, such as traffic jams, pavement porridge, constant rain and violent seagulls.
Councillor Alan Cheevers (FF ) has tabled a motion to force City Hall to retain and maintain its existing ‘G’ branding across all its recreation and amenity facilities, vehicles, stationary, buildings and “other appropriate Council assets”. If mayor Ogbu’s emergency meeting does not go ahead, it may not be debated until the council’s October plenary meeting.
Councillor Níall McNelis (Lab ) said all councillors voted for a branding plan at last year’s budget meeting, but now “the whole country seems to be focusing on just this logo” he said.
“We’re all talking about the seventh letter in the alphabet, not how poorly funded Glaway city council is, how bad its transport infrastructure is, and what the long and cold winter will be like in our hospital’s A&E.”
The council maintains its corporate identity is an executive function, over which elected members have no powers, and that it will retain the city’s coat of arms, awarded by Elizabeth I in 1578, as “part of its brand family”.
“We need to make it easier for people to recognise the role of the Council and the services we provide. The new identity is one part of that work, while also reflecting Galway’s civic heritage and the important place of the Irish language in the city,” said council chief executive, Leonard Cleary, when revealing the new branding last week.
