Dr. Diarmuid Torney:

I thank Senator Pauline O'Reilly for her question. A few issues are involved when we think about local government and local authorities in an Irish context. As I think was hinted at, one of the strengths of local government is its connection to the local population. Local councillors, and local authorities more generally, are in some ways closer to local populations than the national Government. Structures like the public participation networks, PPNs, provide pathways for tapping into local community groups etc. It is welcome, as far as I understand it, that one of the strands of the forthcoming consultation on the revision of the climate action plan is tapping into that network of PPNs. Using such an approach in the context of climate action is to be welcomed. Those are the elements on the strengths side of the ledger.

Moving to examine the weaknesses in this context, by international standards we have very weak local government. I refer to the powers and competencies of our local government bodies, their funding and especially their ability to raise their own revenue. Local government in Ireland is weak by international standards and that is a challenge in this respect. I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all solution, but in my opening remarks I spoke about the idea of particular institutional forums to solve policy blockages. It could be that in a particular context it would be possible to bring together the staff of the local authority, the national agencies and central Government to figure out and try to align the different aspects of the decision-making process. I do not, however, think that there is a one-size-fits-all model that would do that.