Ms Colette Finn:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity to address the Seanad Public Consultation Committee. My political life began in Africa when I went to work on the medical laboratory training project. In Africa, I observed an economy that was based on subsistence farming and the repatriation of money from migrants. This experience taught me that the who, the what and the why of decision-making matter. Politics really matters.

Ireland enacted candidate gender quota legislation in 2012. Because of this legislation, I stood for the Green Party as a candidate. Prior to that, although I had been involved in a political party for more than 20 years, I did not consider being a candidate until I was asked to run.

Let us consider the important roles that local government fulfils. It encompasses planning, enterprise and economic development, social and community development, climate action, housing, infrastructure, transport, libraries, recreation and culture. I could go on. The total number of services provided by local authorities in Ireland is more than 1,100, ranging from abandoned vehicle removal to zoonoses monitoring. Let us think of how much influence all these areas have on people's lives. Yet, despite all this, Ireland's system of local government has been described as the Cinderella of the political system. The system is weak in terms of its powers and responsibilities. For example, on average, Ireland has one council for every 160,000 citizens. This is in stark contrast to France, where the ratio is one council for over 1,600 citizens. Ireland is typically ranked at or near the bottom of the international local autonomy index, which ranks local government systems in terms of their autonomy.

At present, we have 31 local authorities. That is down from 114 in 2014. The number of elected councillors per head of population has fallen from one in 1,600 in 2014 to one in just under 5,000 today. On the public administration side, in 2018, there were 38,000 local authority staff. In 2022, there are 32,000. Local government spending as a percentage of total government spending is typically approximately 8%. In the EU, the average is 23%. In Ireland, we have laboured under the defunding of public administration and this further erodes public confidence in politics and public administration.

One of the good things that came out of the banking crisis is that it undermined, hopefully fatally, the idea that the profit motive will deliver for the public good. Privatisation is not, and never has been, the solution to public sector reform. However, there are management practices that we can learn from the private sector. We must do local government better. Social media is a pressure, but I argue that politics is a workplace and the standards that apply to any workplace should also apply to politics, because our democracy depends on it. The councillor role needs to be full-time with secretarial backup, and spending at a local government level needs to be devolved. If we are to increase the role of local government, we will have to look at what people are doing in the Oireachtas and the Civil Service in order for the improved environment to work.