Ms Maura McMahon:

I am here representing the Green Party-Comhaontas Glas. We had 129 candidates at the last local elections and were fortunate that half of them were women.

I wish to speak to the committee a little bit about our vision for local government - some of the challenges we see and some of the solutions the Green Party would put forward.

The Green Party wants local government to become truly representative of the will of people living locally and councillors to be able to deliver on that mandate.

We want empowered local communities that can hold their councillors and mayors to account and that feel that their voice is heard by the council.

A recent example is the plan by Dublin City Council to install the two bus lanes where the majority of voters at council level are still trying to go through that decision-making process.

Some of the challenges we see and the general facts are that we have the weakest local government in the EU here in Ireland. The statistics are fairly stark. Ireland has fewer local politicians per capitathan all other EU member states. Compared with the UK and other small EU countries, Ireland has the lowest percentage of local government spending as a percentage of total public spending, at only 8.4%, as I think my colleague has alluded to. This compares with the EU average of 23% and 23.7% in the UK.

Within our own 8.4%, only 40% of this is raised by local authorities themselves. This means, as I think my colleague has alluded to, that they rely heavily on Government grants. In an analysis of 57 OECD, EU and Council of Europe countries, Ireland ranked third last on policy scope, that is, the extent to which local government is effectively involved in the delivery of services, and fifth last on effective political discretion, which is the extent to which municipalities have some influence and can decide on aspects of the different functions they have.

The solutions which the Green Party posit, based on the experience of our councillors, is that they feel unempowered, fear that people feel that their voices are not being heard and that local government cannot properly deliver the services it is supposed to deliver. The Green Party wants change in three areas: powers, accountability, and abuse. It wants strong local government with a higher share of resources being spent on councils and devolution of powers from national to local government with more decision-making autonomy.

One of our councillors who presented previously to this committee quoted a constituent as asking what is the point of councillors if they do not have the power to act on behalf of the constituent. Instead of us designing a system from top-down, we all agree that we need to bring it into line with what people expect their council to do. That means, primarily, a strengthening of councillors abilities to deal with the bread-and-butter issues that the council already handles such as planning, social housing, waste, and parks and local services, so that people feel that they can go to their local councillor with issues and can solve them.

Furthermore, the role should be increased and the role councils can play in delivering areas such as education, health, transport and safety should be enabled. What can be decided locally should be decided locally. We believe that Irish local government cannot become world-leading unless we engage with people through local citizens assemblies and participative budgeting so that people can set the priorities of the community, and that more beta projects which have worked, for example in Dublin city, can be introduced in order that people can suggest policy ideas for local problems.

We want a greater voice for younger people and local elections would be an ideal first place to extend that to 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds.

We advocate having full heritage teams in every council. Heritage and biodiversity officers, archaeologists, archivists and county architects should all be in-house. Particularly in light of today's Environmental Protection Agency report, most trends are heading in the right direction on emissions but local authorities must step up a gear and make bold decisions about space reallocation in towns and cities in reducing car dependency, safe routes to schools and public transport in the planning systems.

Another of our solutions is around accountability. With new powers should come more accountability and that should be for both councillors and council management. All local authority meeting should be livestreamed and votes recorded. People should know where their taxes and charges go and public consultation must be meaningful. People should be given reasons why the council came to a certain decision.

Our own Councillor Louise Heavin from Athlone outlined to the committee previously that where towns fall into two county council areas, as a practical example, people from one side of Westmeath make decisions which Athlone-based Roscommon county councillors would be much better placed to make.

The CEO should be accountable to the Minister for Housing, Local Government, and Heritage and there should be more accountability to the councillors. We applauded the directly elected mayor in Limerick and we hope that this will usher in a greater model of accountability and co-operation between elected and unelected officials.

The final solution we are suggesting relates to diversity and abuse which, I think, everybody has noted. It is a most significant problem which stops people from running or re-running with the scourge of abuse which politicians are now facing, particularly women and minorities. That is going across all party lines. Our own Green Party former Lord Mayor of Dublin, Hazel Chu, suffered unprecedented abuse in her term without the systemic supports which are now being recognised as essential.

We have been inspired by the recent election of the Green councillor, Mr. Honore Kamegni, who is now also the deputy Lord Mayor of Cork. He has also suffered from inexcusable abuse, particularly on social media, throughout his campaigns.

In conclusion, I thank the committee. Despite the limitations placed on councils, they have managed to deliver significant achievements in recent years, particularly in the front-line response to Covid-19, the integration of refugees in our communities, the excellent infrastructure for walking and in innovation. We applaud Mayor John Moran and we wish him the best. A directly elected mayor is an inspirational model, which should be extended to towns and cities with populations in excess of 30,000.