Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to discuss the issues of council powers and directly elected mayors.

Local authorities have seen their powers diminish year after year in recent times. For 12 years I was a member of a local authority - Cork City Council - and witnessed that diminishment of powers. For example, bin collection services were run by councils, but they were then privatised across the country. Alongside the privatisation of bin collection services we saw the introduction of bin charges. That privatisation has come at a high cost to taxpayers. It is a hidden cost - the cost of illegal dumping. I am totally opposed to illegal dumping, but one does not need to be a rocket scientist to work out that if a service is privatised and charges are introduced which tend to rise over a period of time, there will be illegal dumping and that it will increase over time. However, the private companies have pocket the profits and the taxpayer is picking up the tab for the massive clean-up operation. I was given figures by officials in the environment department of Cork City Council which indicated that there had been a more than tenfold increase in illegal dumping in the period from privatisation and the introduction of the charges.

Another service that has been reduced is housing provision. In one particular year when I was a member of the council the housing budget was reduced by 90% for local authority house building. The number of local authority houses built in recent years was in the low hundreds nationally. The Government will argue that the process has been reversed and that local authority house building is being ramped up. If it is, it is happening far too slowly, but councils are handicapped by the fact that the direct labour units that were onceavailable - councils had their own bricklayers, carpenters and skilled tradespersons - are no longer available and the work is being farmed out to private operators. The tendering system is holding things up, causing delays in the middle of a housing crisis.

When I was a member of the council, it controlled water services, but we then had the creation of Irish Water. The Chairman is raising his eyebrows because he does not want to get into that topic, but I make the point in passing that it is clear that there was a privatisation agenda. However, it was stymied and blocked by the protest campaign. Nevertheless, control of water services is no longer in the hands of the local authorities. I could go on. I have given as examples waste management, housing and water services. I am surprised that the Minister of State has asked councillors what extra powers they might be given and that no response has been given. I could answer the question very easily and have pinpointed a number of issues straight off the bat. If I had more time, I could go further.

I do not believe the issue of directly elected mayors is totally separate and unrelated. There has been a drive towards market policies, neoliberalism, privatisation and the stripping of powers from local authorities and the issue of directly elected mayors is now on the agenda. Directly elected mayors in cities like Dublin and Cork will be relatively powerful, rising above the powers of councillors to a certain extent as they fashion themselves to having a kind of chief executive officer role. The two things go hand in hand - on the one hand, powerful chief executive officers and, on the other, a neoliberal policy directed at local authorities throughout the State. The people would be far better served if we were to reverse gears and scrap the policy on directly elected mayor and instead gave councils real powers, starting with the restoration of powers in areas such as bin collection services and the establishment of direct labour units in housing departments. We should not just reverse the cuts but also seriously increase the finance available to councils in order that they could get to grips with these issues.