Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

While I welcome the new powers being given to councillors, the Minister did not go far enough in this regard. It is important to note that decisions without resources are a nonsense. Without the resources to implement decisions, councils will be only talking shops. Local authorities are cash starved. Funding for the repair of roads in my county has been radically reduced over recent years. There are currently 3,300 people on the local authority housing list in my area. Last year, the council there made only three acquisitions in the whole year. The recently introduced budget identified 500 new local authority housing builds. This equates to three additional houses in each of the six local electoral areas, LEAs, in Meath. In the context of a housing waiting list of 3,300, an additional three houses for each of the six LEAs is ridiculous. On a human level, the local authority crisis in County Meath and other counties is a disaster.

This type of reform is a sham if the Government continues to reduce necessary budgets. There is much confusion around the proposed new municipal districts. Some councillors to whom I have spoken, including from the Fine Gael and Labour parties, believe that the municipal districts will have power, autonomy, headquarters and budgets. As I understand it, they will not. Rather, municipal districts, which often will have replaced a town council, will be able to make decisions with a cost implication independent of the remainder of the council and, most importantly, without a budget. In that scenario, who will make the decision? Will the county manager become the referee?

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