John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

-----and to be the first speaker on an initiative which I consider to be historic, in terms of the Bill's dialogue with Dublin's past, and the impact the legislation will have on the future local government system of this country.

The Bill is another step towards the fruition of a central policy goal of this Government which, as the responsible Minister, I have steadily and transparently pursued since taking office. The office of mayor of Dublin will carry important statutory powers and functions to which I will refer presently. However, I would like, first, to outline a key rationale for this proposal, which transcends the sum of the specific powers under the legislation. The central goal of the Dublin mayor initiative is the strengthening of local democracy and public administration in Dublin by creating a platform for democratic leadership in the governance of the Dublin region. The provisions of this Bill are before the Dáil today to help bring new leadership to Dublin and address some deficits in the current system. Given Dublin's role in the national economy, the benefits of the mayoralty will also accrue throughout the country.

I will address the current leadership arrangements for local government in Dublin. At present the political leadership of the four Dublin local authorities is provided by four indirectly elected mayors or cathaoirligh, each serving an annual term, assisted by four city and county managers, with a standard seven-year term. The office of cathaoirleach often tends to be regarded as ceremonial, and political leadership among the councillors can be low from the perspective of the electorate. This system of leadership is atypical when compared to systems of local government leadership found elsewhere, not to mention models of leadership used in business and other walks of life.

In April 2008 the Government published the Green Paper on local government, Stronger Local Democracy - Options for Change. The Green Paper identified a disconnect between local government and the citizen which results in poor lines of accountability to the elected council. It is difficult for non-expert observers to understand the system of local government, the dynamics of how decisions are made, who is responsible for those decisions, who should be held to account when failures occur and who should be credited for success.

Those issues are further pronounced when local government's role in meeting regional or cross-institutional challenges is examined. Identifying points of accountability among the complex interplay of State agencies, Departments, and the collective efforts of the four local authorities and one regional authority, is extremely challenging. An economist or political scientist might consider such a system of leadership in Dublin's local government as being sub-optimal in many respects, and might describe the system in terms of the principal-agent problem, a concept which describes a circumstance in which difficulties arise because one party to a transaction has less information than another party. This asymmetry of information and influence creates an imbalance of power. The Dublin mayor will help correct that asymmetry.

We are all democrats in this House and we all recognise the importance of the democratic process, not simply as a mechanism to choose an office holder, but also as a process in which a political conversation takes place where ideas, policies and ideologies are examined, selected and rejected by the electorate. This process will be given greater significance in Dublin under this legislation. Every five years, an election will occur, during which the mayoral candidates will each present a vision for Dublin, and describe how that vision will be attained. The mayor will have described a vision, policy targets and a programme of action for the region prior to election - a programme which will have been scrutinised and will have competed against those of other candidates. That policies will have been endorsed by the electorate will lend those policies a particular strength and provide the necessary basis to depart, if necessary, from existing policies and methods, to re-prioritise and to innovate.

Too often, local government can seem to be little more than a provider of everyday, but essential services that are often taken for granted. Local authorities are regarded simply as service delivery agencies. The public can be unaware of the resource allocation dilemmas and the complexity of policy making, which Dublin's councillors and local authority officials routinely grapple with to pursue the common good. The election of the mayor and the visibility the office will enjoy will also help inform the public as to many of the complex and pressing issues addressed by local government. The local government electors of the Dublin region will have a greater awareness of the personalities, policies, party positions, current debates, challenges, etc. of local government. This can only be a positive development.

The introduction of a directly elected regional mayor is a new departure and an historic development in Dublin's local government. Visibility and accountability go hand in hand. Accountability is necessary for good governance. The mayoral electoral process will help create a more vital arena for the discussion of local government matters. The legitimacy derived from a popular election by 1 million plus electors will present the directly elected regional mayor with a particularly strong mandate. I am sure that strengthened public connection with Dublin's local government leadership will also enhance the credibility of local government. Local government's platform to act as an initiator of cross-institutional activity and a mobiliser of other State agencies providing services locally will also be improved.

Mayors are, first and foremost, leaders. Leadership evokes ideas of purpose, direction, mobilisation, management, trust and innovation. The directly elected mayor of Dublin will provide this leadership, a role that will be manifest in a number of respects.

Complex problems can require complex solutions. For the best outcomes, public bodies must provide solutions which are co-ordinated with other public sector activities. A new coherence in inter-local authority strategic activity in the Dublin region will be brought by the mayor. This integrative role has the potential to strengthen cohesion well beyond the confines of local government. A simple but illustrative example will be the capacity of the mayor, working in partnership with national economic development agencies and capable of speaking on behalf of Dublin's local authorities on strategic matters, to help secure investment in the region.

I will set out the mayor's individual strategic planning and oversight roles in detail shortly. The Bill provides for a broad remit for the mayor to bring together and focus public service activity on meeting the challenges the region faces. The regional development board, involving major public sector, education and enterprise interests from across the region, chaired by the mayor and replacing the four city and county development boards which are currently operated by the Dublin local authorities, will be an important platform for the mayor to bring greater cohesion to the economic, social and cultural development of the region. This integrative role is in keeping with the Government's thinking on local government's evolving mission.

The Transforming Public Services programme recommends that local government structures should be drawn on to enhance public service delivery and that local authority structures should be adopted more generally as the basis for the planning, organisation and delivery of services at the local level. Greater coherence between different levels of government and of the public service is fundamental to more efficient and effective operation. The mayor will be well placed to help advance public service initiatives for a more integrated public service that can achieve better value for money and enhanced customer service.

The capacity of an officeholder to speak on behalf of the community, voice a shared perspective, raise concerns and request action is an important element of leadership. The mayor will have a natural role as a community spokesperson and be able to represent the Dublin regional community on regional issues in a new fashion.

Promoting the region and, by extension, the country as a whole on the international stage will be an important task of the mayor, who can act as an ambassador for the region and the city. The mayoral office will also provide a clear access point for other stakeholders, such as community groups, the business community, Departments and State agencies, all of which will be better able to communicate on strategic regional issues with a single champion.

I anticipate that the mayor, democratically accountable to the people of the region, will also have a strong predisposition to adopting the perspective of the service user rather than the service provider and will place due emphasis on the public and business community's concern for outputs and impacts as opposed to an institutional focus on inputs and processes.

This Bill represents an historic dialogue with Dublin's past. Dublin has had a mayor for almost 800 years and it is, therefore, among our oldest civic institutions. From 2014, I intend that the offices of the lord mayor and the regional mayor will be merged. The Dublin mayor will, from 2014, be titled Lord Mayor of Dublin to ensure that the pre-eminent local government leadership position in the Dublin region is occupied by the directly elected mayor. The prerogatives associated with the lord mayoralty, including occupancy of the Mansion House, will be assumed by the directly elected mayor of Dublin. The post-2014 merger will not be an abolition of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, but an extension and enhancement of that office in terms of jurisdiction, powers and mandate as directly elected lord mayor of the city and the region. The residence of the directly elected mayor of Dublin in the Mansion House and holding the lord mayor's historical prerogatives represent a return to the proper status the mayoralty should enjoy. From 2014, the four Dublin local authorities will each be led by a cathaoirleach. Legislation arising from the forthcoming White Paper will provide for these changes.

I will now describe the specific objectives and intended benefits of this legislation. The directly elected mayoralty will mark a significant shift of power to the elected tier of local government. It will also provide a number of principal benefits. It will strengthen local government leadership, responsibility and accountability in Dublin. The direction provided by the mayor will result in a more efficient system of local government with better outcomes in the economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres for the citizens and businesses of Dublin. The mayor and strengthened regional authority, working with and through the Dublin local authorities, will bring greater coherence to regional policy making in the critical areas of land use planning, transport, waste management, water services and housing. The legislation will provide greater flexibility by giving Dublin local government greater scope to innovate and to develop regional and local responses to regional and local challenges. The introduction of the Dublin mayor will bring the leadership of local government in the region in line with models found in successful cities and regions across the world and, in so doing, contribute to a better future for this city.

The mayor will be the pre-eminent figure within the local government system in Dublin. As leader of the regional authority, he or she will have a range of important statutory functions, including responsibility for establishing and overseeing the future physical development of Dublin city and region by setting out regional planning guidelines by which the Dublin local authorities must abide; an important role in respect of transport in Dublin, leading the Greater Dublin Area TransportCouncil within the National Transport Authority; responsibility for ensuring the delivery of an environmentally sustainable approach to waste management in Dublin by proposing and overseeing the implementation of the Dublin region waste management plan; responsibility for maximising conservation and efficient use of water resources and the safe treatment of waste water through proposing and overseeing the implementation of the Dublin regional water services plan; responsibility for leading and promoting a dynamic city region, both at home and abroad, by championing Dublin in partnership with national development agencies and by bringing all key public and private sector interests together in a new regional development board; potential for promoting quality housing and sustainable communities; and responsibility for promoting the protection and enhancement of Dublin's environment. Operational matters will continue to rest with the four Dublin local authorities, working within the framework laid down by the mayor.

The mayor will be supported by a regional authority elected from among the members of Dublin's local authorities. The existing regional authority will be dissolved and replaced by the numerically smaller, but stronger authority to coincide with the election of the first mayor of Dublin. The regional authority will have a number of functions, those being, to examine and propose amendments to plans proposed by the mayor, to make strategic plans with reserve powers available to the mayor to ensure that plans meet with legal and policy requirements, and to oversee and provide a forum for the mayor to account for his or her actions and a statutory process by which strategic plans are made in a transparent manner. The indirect election of the members of the authority from among the four Dublin local authorities will ensure a strong institutional linkage between the regional and local authorities and a level of expertise and working knowledge of local and regional government in Dublin. The indirect election of the members of the regional authority from among the four Dublin local authorities will ensure a strong institutional linkage between the regional and local authorities and a level of expertise and working knowledge of local and regional government in Dublin among the members of the regional authority.

The costs of funding the Dublin mayor and supporting structures will be met entirely from within the local government sector and will not involve additional resources in that context. Opportunities to reduce costs are being taken. The new, strengthened regional authority provided for in the Bill will have 16 elected members while the authority it will replace has 30.

The Dublin local authorities already support the costs of the existing regional authority and fund the range of collaborative work across the region which will now be drawn together, with costs being consolidated in the new authority. There will be offsetting savings on functions currently performed by other bodies. The staffing structure will be relatively modest and will be drawn from the local government sector. Numbers will be a small proportion of overall savings in local authority staffing under the efficiency review process.

Most important, costs will be significantly outweighed by anticipated benefits in a range of key areas. I already referred to many of these benefits, such as leadership, democratic mandate, flexibility, greater regional coherence and strategic policy setting. In addition, the role of the directly elected mayor has a strong underlying economic rationale, including supporting regional development, by working to help attract and retain investment, acting as a point of contact for commercial interests in the region and working to encourage greater value for money, efficiency and improved customer service in local government for the citizens and businesses of Dublin. On foot of the setting up of the McLoughlin commission, chaired by Mr. Pat McLoughlin, there is now an efficiency review group solely for the Dublin region which will ensure we make substantial cost savings and improve the efficiencies in the region.

I remarked that Ireland's model of local government leadership is somewhat out of step with modern norms internationally. A wide variety of local government leadership models exists in Europe, reflecting the Continent's diverse histories, political cultures, and constitutional and legal frameworks. In certain countries such as Germany and Austria a variety of leadership models co-exist. However, the election of a mayor is by far the most popular model among our European neighbours. In North America, directly elected mayors are a common form of local government leadership. International trends have been strongly toward the direct election of mayors. The new democracies of central and eastern Europe have opted in the main for direct election; as have London, Australia and New Zealand more recently.

Mayors in other parts of the world have made lasting contributions. Mayor Giuliani's leadership in New York following the terrible events of autumn 2001-----

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