Mr. Noel Dempsey:

I think I supported the thrust of that particular document. Of course one could not admit that it could not be improved on at that time. It was regarded as a major reform document and part of the blueprint for major reform, between the Barrington report, that Government White Paper and the later Local Government Act that we introduced.

While Barrington highlighted the shortcomings up to 1991, in the intervening five or six years a further problem arose in the downgrading of local government. Various national and EU-driven initiatives which should have been delivered by local government were assigned to new bodies with no democratic mandate, which bypassed the local government system. There was a great opportunity to expand the role of local government and give it the leadership in local communities, but successive Governments failed to do that. Councillors keenly felt the loss of these opportunities. They saw it as an ongoing trend of downgrading local democracy and local public representatives. They very strongly wanted this trend reversed and were constantly calling for the restoration of powers to democratically elected public representatives. They believed that the local initiatives that I mentioned should be led by the local authority and by democratically elected people. I think the programme for reform was a direct response to that, both the document itself, Better Local Government, and the Local Government Act.

There were four core principles: enhancing local democracy and widening participation; serving the customer better; developing an efficient and effective system to deliver local services; and providing people and resources to allow local government to do its job properly. I am not going to go into the detail of the other reforms, and there were many in that Local Government Act. There was a huge programme of change within the local authorities as a result of that. Local authorities adapted and did it very well with very little fuss. I want to focus on the element of enhancing local democracy and widening participation. It is the one that needs most attention currently. The reform programme focused a lot of effort on enhancing the role of councillors, particularly their policymaking role. It aimed to ensure that local initiatives were operated collaboratively under the auspices of the local authority, rather than bypassing local government. Bringing these groups under the auspices of the local authority through the community and enterprise committees enhanced local government and the role of the councillor. The strategic policy groups and corporate policy groups also were designed to bring councillors into the policymaking role. Whether they made use of that is a subject of debate, I think. There was greater interaction and consultation between the State agencies and the Garda, that featured prominently as well, to give the councillors an opportunity to question State bodies and make them more accountable. The abolition of the dual mandate has been mentioned and we can have a good argument about it. The introduction of the representational allowance was also designed to try to enhance the status of the councillor. The Local Government Act which followed on from Better Local Government was described as the most comprehensive measure ever for change in Irish local government.

Skip on 14 years and we have the Putting People First policy document and the Local Government Act 2014. It is acknowledged as having introduced the most fundamental structural changes in the history of Irish local government. They are two major reform Acts. Despite the negative comment on the abolition of town councils and town commissioners that were referred to, it had at its core an ambition to enhance the role of the councillor. It assigned 45 specific functions to municipal districts and gave the power to devolve a further 24 functions to them. Over 113 major reserve functions are listed in that Act and they remain exclusively in the power of the main council. The change of the title from manager to chief executive was intended to make the chief executive and their staff more accountable to the councillors in the performance of their functions and in spending the resources of the council on what the members decided they needed. Reserve functions of elected members included the power to vary local property tax, the appointment of the chief executive, the power to adopt an annual service delivery plan and the requirement that the chief executive could be held to account by reporting directly to the councillors. A number of other functions were given to the councillors to try to make the system more accountable.

Despite these reforms and the stated aim to enhance the role of the councillors, they still feel very disenfranchised and disempowered. That is clearly seen in the research that was recently done by Maynooth University. I know I am not supposed to wave this report around.