Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend. I represent the Independent Group in Dáil Éireann. We are a group of Independents, as the name suggests. Any views I give are my own and are not representative of the group.

I was elected to Donegal County Council in 1999 and left to come to the Dáil in 2011. I have some experience from my time in the local authority. If we look at local authorities and how they developed, the history is interesting. We have to look at the history to see where we need to go in the future. It is widely known that the local government structure we have now, with city and county managers in control of local authorities, was established in 1940 with the City and County Managers Act. That is the historical context and goes back to the foundation of the State, when local councils basically looked after their own in various ways. The Act was brought in to try to deal with that. We need to move on from that now.

In the early years after the formation of a state, these kinds of things happen. We have to mature and go on from that. What we have now is not a system of local government; it is a system of county managers running the show. Councillors are effectively the opposition in the local authority - they should take on that role. At the moment, councillors go along with the perception that they are in control of the councils, which is detrimental to local areas and how the council works. Donegal County Council has been traditionally run by Fianna Fáil, Independent Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. There is this idea that they run the council - they do not. They decide who goes on committees and to conferences. That is all they have ever done.

They may decide who gets to chair a strategic policy committee. That is how this has developed over the last number of years, in the context of the supposed development of the local authorities. We should have a local authority system where the councillors, whoever they are, who form the majority on the council control the council and drive it into the future. It would be similar to but more effective than what we have in the government system. That is when we might get real local democracy and local elections that make a difference to people's lives in local areas. That is vitally important and should be the driving force in any review looking at how local authorities are run and how they should be changed.

Local authorities should be politically driven and politically run. In many cases, the wrong political view take would be wrong from my perspective, but it will take time to change that as well and it is something we have to be prepared to live with. In the current situation the local authorities are basically a conduit for Government money into the area and just do what the Government asks or tells them to do. The county manager system will not challenge the Government, put anything different to it or take any decisions coming from the local area up and pass them on because the country managers and their staff are looking at their potential for employment after they retire. They are looking to go to the Department and places like that, so we have this system they will not challenge. That is a real problem. The manager system knows what the Department wants and therefore any idea has to be couched in that way when put to the Department because then the authority might have a chance of getting some money from it.

We have this whole system that is ineffectual and does not benefit local people at all. For example, Donegal County Council has been trying to get money back from the Department for the purchase of a site for €2 million for donkey's years. I forget how long ago it is but the Department controls everything within housing. We heard earlier about how councillors could decide how they do housing and stuff like that. I would love to see that happen but I do not think I will. If Donegal County Council wants to develop a housing site, it must first get permission from the Department to buy the land and then it must get its permission to appoint an architect. Then it must do the plans and send them to the Department, which must approve the plans. What is the point in having the council acting as a middleman, basically, for the Department?

We should have a local authority system where the Government gives a council €50 million and tells it to do with that what it sees fit. There would be an audit system in place to ensure the funding is spent properly, but the Government would not direct how that money is spent down to the fine detail. That is the problem we have. The Government's role in the local authority system has been detrimental for many years.

I agree with the Minister of State on the 2014 Act. It was a disgrace and it destroyed a lot of local authorities. It resulted in the dissolution of the 80 town councils which were the purest form of local democracy we have ever seen. In Donegal, there were urban district councils in Letterkenny, Bundoran and Buncrana. They were working on behalf of the people and citizens in the area, which is what we should be doing. We should go back to having more local authorities rather than fewer of them. That would ultimately bring us a proper system that would work for citizens. It is vitally important.