John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be as brief as I can, but when you listen to your colleagues, you get further ideas as to what you want to discuss. I too was a member of a local authority in Kilkenny for three years before the introduction of the dual-mandate ban and while I share some of the reservations of the previous speaker in respect of the dual-mandate ban, I think it was right to separate local authorities from the Houses of the Oireachtas. There is no doubt but that it did remove some of the more influential and bigger hitters from local government and it has been difficult to replace those people.

We have an extraordinarily centralised system of government in Ireland. Our structure leans heavily towards centralisation, which has resulted in limited authority for local councils. Elected councillors lack the governing and fiscal powers necessary for effective local government in many cases.

The reality is that it is that way for a number of reasons. That did not happen by accident. We had a central administration before the country reached independence, but it suits categories of people, not least the Department itself, to have a centrally run system. Even more relevantly, the officials of the local authorities themselves have a vested interest. We have also seen with councillors over the years that from time to time, when difficult issues emerge, particularly as regards the housing of Travellers or planning permission for wind turbines, which I referred to earlier, and when difficult decisions have to be made, sometimes they are not made, and those powers are willingly handed up by local officials. In my three years in the Custom House, it became a kind of running joke with me. I met the representatives of the two different councillor groups on many occasions. Our engagement ran into Covid. Every time I would ask them, "What additional powers do you want as local councillors?" Never once was a power requested. It was almost like a test at stages. I would offer the same few examples as to additional powers that local authorities should maybe take on. I am not saying that every local councillor in the country would hold the view of the people who happened to hold the chairs of those groups for three years, but it was remarkable that they could never find one additional power that they felt their local authority could and should deliver.

There are fundamental questions as to how we structure local government into the future, and it is timely to have this discussion. I hope it is not just a discussion but that this can be debated as something that can be acted on. What sort of structure do we see our local authorities having geographically into the future? I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív and others that the geographically based system around counties holds strong identity issues for people. It is a logical basis on which to start.

Then - and I referred to this earlier - what functions do we want our local authorities to carry out, looking at other jurisdictions? Deputy Howlin mentioned that health and its delivery have changed dramatically in recent years, from the time of the county committees of health. I cannot remember when they were abolished but it is a long time ago. That is not to say that in County Wexford there are not five or six acute facilities, mostly for the elderly, although there is the general hospital in Wexford town, about which the councillors in those areas have specific questions. They should have a role in at least the gleaning of information as to what is going on in those systems.

The elephant in the room is how we fund local government into the future. Commercial rates, obviously, are still the bedrock. Local property tax has become somewhat of a football. The well-off local authorities across the board reduce it. The less well-off local authorities increase it without any reference to what services or increased services they wish to deliver on the ground, the other existing source of funding being central funding. There are other systems of funding local government that we have never really examined in Ireland but that would provide the potential for sustained funding into the future.

We also need to look at the role of the councillor. Deputy Ó Cuív spent some time on this and spoke about social media and its impacts. As regards the retirement rate of councillors, I have been pleasantly surprised, as we face into local elections in a couple of months, that the avalanche of retirements that had been expected, maybe partly expected even by me, has not materialised. That is not to say we should not look at the commitment, and I have a different view from Deputy Ó Cuív on this. We are slowly but surely devising a system of local government whereby most, if not the majority, of members on local authorities are retired people, unemployed people, students or people who have smaller outgoings and are able to live off a small pension or whatever along with the representative payment.

We need to examine the meeting structure of local authorities. We need to examine supporting people through their employer to be able to get time to work. We have spoken about this previously but people should not be at a disadvantage in terms of the time commitment because we do not want to have local authorities that are composed solely or largely of narrow segments of society. Pensioners, for example, are not a narrow segment, but there are others that are pretty narrow. We should seek to have local authorities that are truly representative. That means people who work in different backgrounds as well as councils that are balanced in respect of gender and the communities they represent. We should not seek to promote solely those who have more time and are, therefore, able to work within the strictures of the current system.

The other fundamental question that has to be asked is: who will give up their powers? We see this a bit at the moment as regards a directly elected mayor in Limerick and the legislation in that regard. Which Departments, and which sections within Departments, will willingly give up their powers? It is a big Irish thing - "I have my lump of power and I am not going to give it to you, councillor, or to the council." That has to be driven centrally down, but there has not been a willingness traditionally in Ireland to do that. In fact, as Deputy Howlin said, it has been traditionally the opposite. It is to gather powers in.

I completely disagree with the Deputy on the return of town councils. Some have this rose-tinted view that town councils were great. Town councils were not just outdated but completely antidemocratic to the majority of the population who lived outside of towns. That is why I firmly believe that the municipal district system is far fairer. There is no reason, by the way, it could not be extended into the city authorities as well and we could have a municipal district system within city authorities. What do I mean by that? In many other parts of Europe, people are elected to local authorities and serve on a central body, but then there are also councillors who are just elected and who serve locally. There is no reason in the Piltown district of south Kilkenny, which has five municipal district councillors, that there should not be ten or 12 in total who would be represent the municipal district. It would be an effective way of decreasing the ratio of members to population, which is a valid criticism that councillor representative groups have had. I also find from talking to councillors that they find the well-run municipal districts to be very effective in delivering services locally, on the ground. Rather than going back to a system that we might feel was great in the past, let us expand on a new system, which seems to work well, judging by any conversation I have had with county councillors who are members of municipal districts.

Finally, I want to refer to the issue of directly elected mayors, which is close to my own heart as my wife texted me last night and asked, "Did you have anything to do with those directly elected mayors at all? I was looking at social media tonight." As the legislation for Limerick passes - and Limerick has been an exemplar local authority in recent years - I am a passionate believer that there is a massive democratic hole at the heart of local government. That concerns the chief executive and his or her powers. How do we rebalance those powers? Each local authority having its own directly elected chairperson is the way to rebalance those mayors, effectively having the local population elect what we used to call county managers and remove them after five years if they do not like them, or keep them if they do.

At the moment that is the biggest democratic deficit at the heart of how our local government structure works.