Councillor Michael O'Brien:

We welcome the opportunity to interact with the Chairman and his colleagues on this matter. In doing that we are conscience that our association has made constructive submissions on local government reform in the past 20 years in particular under its current name and its former name, the General Council of County Councils, to this Government and previous Governments. Looking around the room I am aware that we are fortunate to have the ear of past eminent members of our association who have served the public in that role.

We welcome that at least some measure of reform will result from the Local Government Bill 2013 that is before us. A central theme of the association's submissions over time has been the centrality of the county councils and city councils to the functioning of local government. The county councils are the only component of our local government system that serve all of the people. Whether it is the town centre dweller or the rural farmer, county level local government serves citizens in all environments - urban, suburban and rural.

Even in the case of town councils the county council's responsibility did not stop at the town boundary. Many services ranging from main roads to libraries and fire brigades were and still are provided by the county council. We see the reform proposed in the Local Government Bill 2013 as the logical conclusion to that reality on the ground. The town councils will now be integrated with the operation of the county councils providing a unified local government service to the public. We welcome this step forward as we have long believed that a unitary local government system, which is proven throughout Europe, would provide our citizens with best value while fully respecting the requirements of subsidiarity. We also welcome section 14 (a)(3) of the current Bill, which reiterates that the county and city councils are the primary units of local government and, as members are aware, they are enshrined in the 2001 Local Government Act.

We have certain concerns about Part 3 of the Bill, which relates to the establishment of municipal districts as a component of the county councils. While we accept that it is a step towards the unified delivery of local government we question whether the concept of municipal districts is a viable and practical one in the Irish situation. The concept of a municipal district acting in a kind of proxy capacity for the county council continues to dilute the aspiration for a streamlined and unified local government service. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. The type of service we are talking about as outlined in the Bill is widespread throughout Europe in countries that practise a unitary local authority system. However, assuming the municipal districts go ahead, we must reiterate that the collection of household charges and commercial rates must be conducted by the county council. If such a function was to be given to the municipal districts it would, in effect, transform them into a town council by another name. We support the Minister's position that there will be only one budget-making authority in the new configuration.

A trend over the past 30 years or so has been the advent of organisations that spend large amounts of public money on development projects at arm's length from the democratically elected county councils. This leads to two streams of public money being spent in the same county without any co-ordination between the two. We acknowledge the efforts expressed in Part 6 of the Bill in regard to drawing the development companies into an alignment with the statutory local authorities. However, there are a number of alarming features which in our view will compromise any meaningful alignment between the local authority and the local development sectors in each county.

We are also concerned about the method of selection of the members of the local and community development board. Section 35(2) inserts a section 128D(3)(a), which states that the chief officer of the local community development committee shall "seek and select nominees" to the committee. In other words, the selection of members of the committee is being left to an official, and it gets worse. The proposed section 128D(3)(b) states: "The nominees shall be appointed to the committee, without omission or addition, by resolution of the local authority. In other words, the local authority - the democratically elected forum of the people - is required to rubber stamp names put together by an officer or an official. We urge members to examine this undemocratic arrangement again when they resume scrutiny of the Bill.

Section 51 requires the Minister to meet an association at least once a year. We welcome that but we believe it falls short of the level of consultation required. A major complaint of our members is the volume of domestic and EU regulation which arrives at local government level without any consultation with the people who are expected to implement the new codes and regulations. Local authority members must be involved at the earliest stage possible in the development of such regulation. We note that the County and City Managers Association has a major involvement in the Custom House as regards developing policy for local government. We believe that wherever the managers are the councillors should be there also. That principle would provide that necessary system of checks and balances.

We welcome the broad vision for the reform as regards the creation of a single tier local authority system which blends subsidiarity with efficiency. However, we also have concerns about the Bill and we ask members to critically examine the aspects we have highlighted in our analysis, which we will circulate at an early stage.