Dr. Shana Cohen:

Just judging from survey data and our qualitative research, local government in Ireland is historically fairly weak but particularly so since the financial crisis. One point we found consistently is that there is a distrust of local government. More importantly, there is a desire for a stronger local government. Within Ireland that would have a significant impact. People want to be able to engage more with their councillors but also to see Dublin City Council have the capacity to initiate improvements in areas faster.

The appeal of a strong leader, regardless of their political beliefs is that they are promising they can strip past all the bureaucracy, the "deep state" or whatever they want to call it, and effect change. It is the idea that somebody is going to come and improve my life and I will not have to wait for another consultation, regeneration plan or some promise of investment, but it is going to happen because this person is promising me political strength. That has an appeal if you are in an area where you have waited a long time, you have participated in various consultations and they have not led to anything, and you are faced with a weak local government that has limited capacity to instigate changes that are fairly quick rather than long term, like ten or 15 years.

One community in north Dublin that I was doing work with said they had been asking for a community centre for 12 years and they are still waiting for a response on it. That obviously generates frustration and impatience. The community had been given an apartment in one of the buildings in a social housing complex but they want a real community centre. There is constant lobbying, negotiating and pushing the council to achieve some sort of response but that does not help. If somebody is comes along and says "I am going to do this for you because I am strong", then maybe they will trust that person to do it.