Dáil debates

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Local Government (Mayor and Regional Authority of Dublin) Bill 2010: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

6:00 pm

Photo of Noel AhernNoel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I was a member of a local authority, Dublin City Council, for 17 years. Generally, I regard that period as a positive time for me. I began to get involved in and learn the ropes of politics. It often surprises me when I hear people of all sides criticising, lamenting or complaining about their time in local authorities. Before the dual mandate was done away with many of us served on a local authority. It baffles me that people criticise their time on the authorities and the local authority system. I am a strong believer in the local authority system and I have held such views for several years.

I realise it is different and perhaps easier now in some respects with the advent of area committees. When I first joined the local authority I had developed a good view of some of the issues it addressed from being on residents committees and sports clubs. However, I was exposed to other issues which had not arisen in my background. Among the city council standing committees were the cultural committee, which I recall sitting on and from which I made on-site visits to places to which tourists to the city went but where I had never been in all my years; the planning committee; the general purposes committee; and the housing committee, which is relevant to my constituency. I found this work interesting. The general debate at local authority level is satisfying and there is more debate and interaction than standing up here and talking to the four walls for 20 minutes.

I am an absolute and strong believer in the local authority system. However, I am underwhelmed by this legislation. I have examined the Minister's speech and the memorandum but it is difficult to get the hang of it. One keeps reading and searching for the real meat and the great issues. There are many sections and the Bill is large enough but it is difficult to find the real issues of substance. Perhaps I should read it from cover to cover but I found it hard to come across the body of it. The Bill is high on aspiration and hope and perhaps it will develop in time but it is low on content and it is difficult to grasp the key issues involved.

Members of local authorities will point out the difference between reserved and managerial functions. Local authority members always complain of the lack of power they have and maintain they would prefer to have more reserved functions etc. When some of them complain, they do not realise the powers they have and if they studied and worked harder they would realise they have more powers and could do more if they worked with what they have. While I express my support for the general local authority system I do not maintain it is perfect or that it could not be improved - of course it could.

From listening to Deputy Gogarty and others discuss places outside the city and the other three local authorities, it appears the structure in the city works rather well and we should be slow to change it or, at least, we should reflect deeply and long and be sure of what we are doing. People may seek a change in the political structures, to reform local government and the way Dublin city and county work, then report back to the effect that issues have been transformed and great new legislation has been introduced and claim they are wonderful because they have grasped the nettle. That is all very well but let us hasten slowly and ensure what we are doing is right and serves the city.

The most fundamental need for reform involves the transfer of some power from the manager but I cannot find reference to this in the legislation. There is much aspiration, the mayor will be involved in this and that, he or she will chair meetings and consult with various groups and influence people and so on but I cannot see it. Will the Minister indicate in his closing remarks or on Committee Stage what is envisaged? I realise the City and County Management (Amendment) Act dates back to 1924 or 1927 and that the county managers are a powerful body but was there any attempt to take power from them? Did we back off or chicken out or did we deal with the issue? I do not foresee the management structure handing over any of its power to the new mayor, which, we hope, will be all-powerful and develop into an important role in future. I am doubtful whether this aspect has been sufficiently covered.

There are many references in the Minister's speech to the effect that Dublin is now a region, that it is not competing with Donegal or Galway but with other cities in Europe and worldwide and that we must have someone to champion Dublin and give leadership and I go along with this thinking . We have dealt with that, we have done it and we continue to do it on a day-to-day basis. Previously, Dublin was under one authority. The county council was under the city council and under the control of an assistant city manager. Therefore, there was integration and co-ordination at one stage. However, change was foisted on us for reasons related to the what took place in the county. There were no zoning problems in my time on the city council. There may have been re-zoning decisions but they were taken for the good of the city as we perceived it and they were not controversial in the context of other places.

As Dubliners and regardless of whatever role we have undertaken in the past, whether as Deputies, councillors, Lord Mayors, Ministers or Ministers of State, we act and speak in whatever forum or platform we are given to promote Dublin. We have done this in the past and if one wished to formalise this in some way there are other ways to do so. There could be a Minister of State for Dublin. I realise there are some Ministers of State from Dublin and I believe that when they travel throughout or outside the country, in addition to carrying out their role in their Departments, whatever it may be, they also represent their country as well and they push the right buttons for their city. I refer to the Minister of State with responsibility for trade in this regard.

We could have done this in a more economic way. I have heard some of the comments from across the floor. It is amazing how some people manage to discuss other crises and problems when what is at issue is this legislation. However, we must be aware of public opinion as well.

We must be sure of what we are doing and not simply introduce a whole new system that does not really work. We are trying to streamline the political system, to give better value, to cut costs and we must watch out and be careful in this regard. We have no wish for this to become another HSE whereby it would be set up with the hope to reform it subsequently by introducing cuts here and there; the intention would be to do things in an efficient manner later but then one might lose it. Having elected a Lord Mayor one should leave him or her to begin his or her work. We must be careful about what we are doing. Dublin has a long record and the position of Lord Mayor has been in place for several hundred years. I am unsure whether Isaac Butt was the first Lord Mayor because I have not seen the list for some time. I should go to the Oak Room to see it.

In recent years the trend has been that the Lord Mayor is only in the role for one year but that has not always been the case nor is there any obligation for this to be the case under the existing legislation. If the colleagues of the Lord Mayor on the council wish to put him or her in place for two, three or five years, it can be done. If one looks at the list in the Oak Room, one will see there have been Lord Mayors in the past who represented the city for a number of years. This notion that we could not have a mayor in office for a number of years is mistaken. It could happen.

Some sections of the Bill caught my eye. There is one that states that the mayor shall personally appoint five people to his or her office. According to the Minister's speech, the mayor's office will be a tightly knit group of about 30 people. In view of this, five people appointed by the mayor seems excessive. I wonder deeply about that. We all know that Ministers have two staff and Deputy Gormley, as a party leader, perhaps has four or five. They are in a big Department over at the Custom House. Whatever the number of staff over there, it is big enough that five appointees would be sufficiently spread around. However, five appointees by the mayor - who is in office for one year - in an office of 30 is crazy. Somebody should have talked to senior people - and those not so senior - in the HSE, which is a body of around 10,000 people. I hear lots of stories about the five or six experts brought in by the previous chief executive over the last five years, who totally destroyed morale and ruined the bloody place because they undermined other senior staff. I am glad to see the new chief executive has not repeated that mistake. It is one thing to bring five people to an organisation of 100,000; to bring five people from outside to an office of 30 people would be inappropriate. There would be no continuity from one five-year period to another. It is wrong and it should be reconsidered. It is nothing to do with who the mayor is - nobody knows who he or she will be in any year - but it does not seem proper.

I have serious concerns about the whole process of a direct election for mayor. I do not think it will fit into our existing system. We do not have a directly elected Taoiseach. We do not do our business in that way. Whether one is in this House or any local authority chamber, the Taoiseach or mayor is the person who has the support of his or her party or a coalition of parties. That is how this country is structured and we should be careful about moving away from it and having some form of dictator, who may, in an office of 30 people of whom five or six have been appointed by himself or herself, feel that great work is being done. If he or she does not have alliances with and the co-operation of colleagues up and down the chain, I do not see how anything can happen.

I have major reservations about the nomination process for mayor as described in sections 94 and 95 of the Bill. It needs to be tightened and the process needs to be controlled. It is fine to say that any recognised party of a reasonable size can nominate somebody, but to say that independent candidates can be nominated by 60 voters is crazy. It is looking for trouble. We cannot do that. Anybody can be elected to a city or county council as an Independent; maybe one can come in here as an Independent, but one is not coming in as Taoiseach. The city council has 52 members and the others have, I think, 24 each. There are probably 110 or 120 councillors across the four council areas. Perhaps the approval of 10% of these - that is, 10 or 12 councillors - should be required.

I do not want to suggest that it be so tightly controlled that small parties and those who come together independently do not have a chance of nominating anybody, but a process in which anybody can walk in off the street with 60 signatures and get a nomination is too loose. It is all right to say that people are very intelligent and we cannot control who they wish to vote for. However, I see groups in the media and elsewhere that love the challenge of putting up somebody who has no knowledge of politics, not to mind anything else. We need to manage it in some way so that the man or woman who attains this office has some knowledge of politics and some influence with the other councillors in the regional authority and the city and county council. I am just saying that it needs a lot of consideration on Committee Stage. Some people will see this as another layer of management, and we must make sure this is not the case.

I am surprised at what I see in some of the sections of the Bill. Section 165 specifies a maximum campaign expenditure of €200,000. That is big money. We need to be careful about what we are doing here. The section also mentions expenditure in the 45 days coming up to an election. There are many sections in this Bill - I suppose they have to be there - that appear to be transcribed from electoral legislation generally. In recent years we have become very good at putting such things into legislation, but I wonder whether anyone observes these rules. I remember, at the time of the last general election, driving around different constituencies and noting the number of posters put up by some of the candidates. I knew I had a thousand posters up, but I felt these candidates must have had 10,000. Nine months afterwards, when people lodge the details of their expenditure, they claim to have had only 500. If we have all these rules and regulations, there must be a system implemented by the Department, the local authorities or the Standards in Public Office Commission under which they are enforced.

I also have concerns about the provisions pertaining to the regional authority, and we should consider some amendments in this regard. The new regional authority will be smaller than the old one, with the mayor and 15 ordinary members. Although we are trying to achieve continuity, four of those ordinary members will be changing every year because they will be the cathaoirligh of the individual councils. The Dublin Regional Authority sometimes sits in joint session with the Mid-East Regional Authority, which is not being touched by this legislation. Only one of the eight regional authorities - the Dublin one - will be affected. When the Dublin and Mid-East Regional Authorities sit in joint session, the Dublin one will have fewer members, although it represents three times the population. I do not think we have considered the nitty gritty of some of these provisions, or the follow-on effects they will have. These issues need to be discussed. In this case, the provisions may result in the Mid-East Regional Authority having 22 members at a meeting, representing a population of half a million, while the Dublin Regional Authority, representing a million and a quarter, has significantly fewer members.

I have a number of concerns about the regional authority and there are several things that need to be tightened up. One of these concerns is funding. We have to sort out all these things; we cannot just rush ahead, have an election and elect a mayor. We could say there will be three years for things to settle down, but that is not the way to do things. Once a person is elected, he or she will want to get things up and running, and the time to sort out all these things is before the election. While I have major reservations about the Bill, I hope that, with appropriate amendments to make it relevant to our current system, it will be a success. The model should be the way we do our business in this country and not looking at mayors in other countries. It will need much consideration and time; rushing into passing this Bill and rushing into an election will lead us into a mess down the road. I urge that we take our time.

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