Mr. Guss O'Connell:

A Chathaoirligh, tá áthas mór orm a bheith anseo inniú. I am delighted to be here today and I thank the committee for inviting us along to discuss the future of local government.

If we are looking at the landscape at present, we know that there is quite a lot of activity going on there. I agree with a lot of what my colleagues have said.

I also agree fully with the criticism that Ireland has an extremely centralised form of local government and, as a consequence, has a very poor form of local administration also. There are historical reasons for this, some of which are understandable, but as we now approach pre-Famine levels of population and have a very diverse population, and we operate in a multimedia environment, it is timely that real root and branch reform and decentralisation takes place.

It can be argued that at present quite a lot of bodies out there in the landscape claim to be part of local government. We have area committees, as we have discussed already. We do not have urban municipal districts as we do rural councils. This is a big disadvantage. There are SPCs, PPNs, LCDC, partnerships, LEADER programmes, local policing forums, drug task forces, Part 8, public consultation structures, ETBs, health forums and regional assemblies. In theory there are quite a lot of opportunities for people to engage. However, in the council it is the executive that exercises most of the limited powers available to local government and is ultimately responsible to the Minister. Although councillors do sit on many of these bodies, there is very little connection between what they do and what is needed in an overall context.

Councillors have lost a lot of the limited powers they had. There is a very poor response to councillors' motions from Ministers and Departments. The Part 8 system needs to be much more interactive with residents. Councillors should have an active voice in local planning issues. We had this but it was removed recently. Safety and protection for councillors needs to be put on a statutory basis.

From my engagement in working groups such as the Lord Mayor's committee for a directly elected mayor for Dublin prior to 2019, it is obvious that simple decentralisation to the regions would be skewed due to the sheer population on the east coast. While county integrity is important, and we must hang onto this, perhaps the unit of local government should be closer to the people. We have seen that the break up of County Dublin into three council areas has worked. When we add in Dublin city we find the county identity still holds, as we see, for example, in GAA loyalty. Therefore, a revamped municipal district approach may offer the best option for urban and rural-based communities.

We should focus on a bottom-up system whereby municipal districts are given responsibility to raise taxes and spend on local services, such as housing, parks, community centres, local area planning, culture and heritage, footpaths, traffic control, relevant bylaws and local environment. Municipal districts would operate in a directly-elected regional structure that would be responsible to raise and spend taxes for education, health, waste management, planning, policing, climate action and other such overarching services, which are best under regional control but determined through formal co-operation and consultation with constituent municipal districts. National government and Departments would be responsible for foreign policy, external relations, national laws, defence, formulating the national budget and co-ordination and support, not dictation to regions and municipal districts. The taxation system would have to be adjusted, so the taxes levied at local and regional level would be factored into corporate taxation, income taxation and all other taxes to include, obviously, an equalisation mechanism.

Applying the principle of subsidiarity means that responsibility, accountability and decision-making should be devolved as close as possible to the beneficiaries of what we are trying to do. I suggest that participative budgeting, as piloted by South Dublin County Council, should be developed with a view to building a more egalitarian, inclusive and just society whereby every person feels they are equal and has an opportunity to contribute and benefit by living in the area they choose. The specific policy committees and people's participative support system should be reformed, giving them a role in participative budgeting and a more independent and strengthened consultative voice overall.

The local electoral system should be reformed to provide for direct elections - on the same day - to regional councils, municipal districts, specific policy committees and people's participative networks, so that we see them all as part of a blanket approach towards ensuring the citizen is at the centre and is involved. Regional councils and municipal districts should have directly elected mayors with executive powers. All other elected members would be part-time, providing they had sufficient secretarial support. I can do an awful lot more if I have secretarial support than I can do on my own. After 33 years working as an elected representative, and the previous 30 years as an activist, I believe we in Ireland are at a crossroads. We seriously need to look at how we are structuring society in a way that people feel part of it. Otherwise most of us would recognise there is beginning to be drift away from democracy towards anarchy.