Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Over the coming months, there will be a gradual transfer of powers from the town councils in County Meath to the management at county hall. This follows the recent publication of the Bill, which will create 31 single tier local authorities in Ireland from the current 114 councils. I had the privilege a number of years before I was elected to the House of attending a meeting at which the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, who was then an opposition spokesperson, laid out his plans for local government reform if he was lucky enough to be appointed to the office. I am privileged to be in the House as he seeks to enact those plans, which will have a positive effect on our communities.

A range of outdated legacy rank and status issues inherited from the 19th century system will be addressed following decades of false political promises of reform by successive Governments, mostly led by Fianna Fáil, and I am proud the Minister has the opportunity to introduce such fundamental institutional change. Good governance can be linked directly to the transparency and accountability that operates within a society. It is marked by broad support for good administrative structures and public confidence in social justice.

The State wandered far from those ideals and its defining attributes became a lack of accountability, excessive secrecy and probably undue control. An opportunity to address those failings has now arisen and we are taking it.

Apart from giving effect to major structural reorganisation, the most important provisions in the Bill are the changes being made to local authority governance. The Bill will see the rebalancing of powers between the executive and the elected council, bringing with it much greater powers to elected council members to direct policy. Going forward, the councils will oversee implementation and actively review actions of local authority management. Councillors will have power over the appointment of the new chief executive position, which will replace the old county manager role. In addition, the expansion of the role of SPCs is really welcome, given that I spent years on one, as is the establishment of a national oversight and audit commission.

In my own county of Meath, Meath County Council will now have 40 members elected to the council, reflecting the population size and growth over the past number of years. I very much welcome that finally the population size is being recognised. I also very much look forward to when our funding recognises the population growth we have experienced in Meath over the past ten to 15 years because it has not done so in recent years. When one compares per capitafunding with that in other counties with lower population sizes, one sees they get the same amount of funding. I look forward to that issue being addressed.

The provision in section 18 ensures the continuity of policy from what will soon be dissolved town councils to the county councils but I have a small issues in regard to the deficits that will be carried over from town councils to the newly formed county council structures. My county has three town councils which will be abolished next May. Each of them carries quite considerable deficits which will obviously hinder and place a millstone around the neck of the new council elected next May in terms of the activities in those areas. Will that be taken into consideration?

I wish to go back to what reformed local government will look like. It will enhance economic, social and community development in our counties. It will deliver efficient and really good value services, which we need in our communities. It will represent our citizens and communities in a way that is effective, very transparent and more accountable, with our elected councils providing strong leadership and not, as sometimes happened in the past, hiding behind the manager or claiming to have no powers. The Bill vests real, new and substantial powers in our elected county councillors, which is really welcome.

The reforms are long overdue. There needs to be greater scrutiny in the way local authorities are managed. This is not true of all counties but a culture of the inside track and who one knows was very prevalent in some counties. It was extremely corrosive not only for the political system, but for the communities it served and I am very glad that will be removed. It is particularly destructive in a community and a society where innovation and entrepreneurship is vital.

The changes offer an opportunity to start afresh and forge new local governments to serve the community. The whole point of local government reform is to ensure that our local councils deliver better services to their citizens. For too long, local government has been by-passed by quangos. I want councils to do more for citizens and for local communities but I accept that first local government must regain public trust and this Bill genuinely lays the foundations for that happen.

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