Labour calls for radical local government reform

Hot on the heels of last week's report by the Democracy Commission, Eamon Gilmore, Labour Party spokesman on the Environment and Local Government has said that Ireland is a less democratic country than it was 10 years ago.  His basic point is that huge chunks of our public services have been removed from democratic accountability.

His examples of this include the lack of democratic control over the health services, following the abolition of the Health Boards; the privatisation of many essential services such as telecommunications, waste collection and, increasingly, water; the transfer of powers and functions from Ministers who are answerable in the Dáil to various state agencies and independent bodies that are not.

It is the recent trends in local government that Gilmore directs most of his criticisms.  He sees local councillors "stripped of their powers" at the expense of County Managers and Directors of Service and he claims that the public are being effectively shut out of the planning process in respect of major infrastructural projects.  Gilmore contends that "much of this trend has been encouraged by a new political fashion according to which decision-making should be removed from local politicians and put in the hands of 'independent professionals'".

Gilmore then outlines Labour's reform proposals and given that he could be the Minster for the Environment after the next general election, it's worth paying them some attention:

• The devolution of significant areas of public services to local authorities, with consequential reallocation of resources and personnel;
• The re-mapping of Local Authority areas to reflect and represent settlements and communities as they have developed;
• The re-balancing of the respective powers of councillors and County Managers, to ensure that council development is accountable to the elected members and not the other way around;
• The ending of the power of the Minister for the Environment to abolish a Local Authority, replacing it with a requirement for fresh elections when an elected council does not adopt its annual budget;
• The direct election of city and county mayors;
• The introduction of new procedures on public consultation which will be aimed at problem resolution.

What should we make of both the proposals and the analysis on which they're based?  First of all let me declare that I'm not exactly impartial or disinterested as I work for a local authority.  There's also not much that is new in terms of particular proposals.  The problem is that the policies are presented in a press statement rather than in a policy document.  Therefore the evidence and argument that one should rightly expect simply isn't here.  For instance, the assertion that councillors have been stripped of their powers is is oversimplified and misleading.  Councillors have more potential than they ever had to formulate polices by what are known as SPCs.  The problem is that they rarely have the inclination. 

Gilmore is right about the emergence of a democratic deficit in Irish democracy and is on solid ground when he describes the many activities that have been moved outside the bounds of direct parliamentary scrutiny and accountability.  The specific proposals on local government are weaker - not because they are wrong in principle but there's no convincing demonstration of how we could move things on to a different dynamic, especially regarding the relationship between elected members and senior officials.  The key question to address is how to go beyond the politics of local brokerage.  I don't see any evidence of councillors chomping at the bit to influence the direction of policy and being frustrated by the managers.  Councillors are still inclined to see their role as almost exclusively representational and this is a function of the wider national political culture.

Comments

[aidanmcnamara]

How long has he taken to work it out? Local councillors have always been a joke. Their forum is akin to the debating society which ostensibly prepares the...er...professional politician.

[Frank neary]

Gerry,

what job do you do in local government?