John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister has said, we are here again with thanks to Deputies Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin. The Minister has spoken on some of the governmental and legislative framework contained in the Bill. I want to talk about some of the political elements. I suspect it is a reflection of his time on the city council but Deputy Ryan referred to the "city". Coming from Dublin City Council I would say that we have to avoid the exclusive use of the term "city" as used multiple times by Deputy Ryan. It excludes a whole raft of the population in Dublin. It was accidental and not deliberate but it was the language used.

I did not want to speak last night about the Bill being proposed by the Green Party when I spoke about my own party's proposals, but the Bill has some political shortcomings that would make it quite difficult to sell to people on the street. It starts in the early part of the Bill. The Deputy made the point last night about there being almost 150 pages in the Bill. I have read the Bill through, twice. I have read it from the perspective of being a good Dubliner who has an interest in this issue, as I know Deputy Ryan does and has done for a long time. More than 100 pages of the Bill are legal framework. At the outset the impression is that the Bill is 150 pages of ideas and solutions. It is not. There is a lot of legal framework, as is necessary with any Bill, but it is very short on hard, heavy functions. During the debate last night, reference was made to mayoral strategy. The Bill says that "The Mayor shall, after consultation with such public authorities or other persons as he or she considers appropriate, prepare a statement ... not later than 6 months after his or her election to the office of Mayor." That would be a strategy statement. I believe that Dubliners would expect more than that. As a Dubliner I would like to have such a statement before I cast my vote. I do not want to vote for someone who is telling me that if he or she gets as far as being mayor they would have a strategy statement within six months. This is a fundamental weakness in the Bill. The Bill also says that "The Mayor shall submit a draft of a strategy statement to the members of the Authority ... not later than 4 months after his or her having been elected Mayor." Again, I believe that the offices, functions and executive powers of the mayor should be well in place so that people have a very good idea of what a mayor would set about doing.

When we talk about the role of the deputy mayor, and I understand that these things can be amended, London discovered very quickly that it needed a night-time mayor. There have been arguments made by Dublin traders and business and community interests that Dublin needs a political voice in charge of evening life in Dublin. I believe that should form an essential part of any contribution to the Bill.

I do not believe that membership of the proposed authority is representative enough. Again, this can be open to amendment, but I keep finding issues that would have to be amended. If a previous Minister, Phil Hogan, had not expanded the four Dublin local authorities, particularly the three regional authorities, to 40 members each, then perhaps a regional assembly with two or three members from each county might have been workable. As Deputy Ó Broin will know, there are five electoral local area committees in our administrative county. Each of them would expect to be represented on a regional assembly to make it truly democratic. The objectives of the proposed authority are quite vague in a Bill that is so substantial. The language around the general functions of the authority talks about carrying out of reviews, the promotion of co-operation and the promotion of enterprise and innovation. This is vague and could be far more specific. The Bill also talks of requesting things of the local authorities. If one talks of a mayor directing the four local authorities I suspect this may present a legal issue because currently, as Members know, the only persons who can direct a local authority are its members. Even on the reserve functions the chief executive officer in most of the local authorities will only take directions from the members.

The Minister made reference to the content of the Bill with regard to the housing authority. I agree, but time has moved on since this Bill was drafted, when housing was not such a crisis. Certainly, if I was a voter in Dublin and the plebiscite had passed and the Bill was passed, come election day I would like to know that there is a body over which the mayor has considerable powers, answerable to an assembly. Here there is a plan for an agency - chaired by the mayor - to tackle housing and homelessness in Dublin, and that the mayor is responsible for ensuring the agency executes it powers and its functions.

The language used in the Bill on the greater Dublin area transport council refers to such matters as the council shall monitor, shall make recommendations and shall consider the recommendations. We, however, are concerned here with a mayor with executive powers, as with the mayors of London and other cities and towns, as Deputy Martin rightly pointed out. When we point to the challenges facing this city such as traffic congestion, housing and homelessness then someone with a lot of courage and a lot of steel is, I hope, the kind of person the Dublin electorate deserves. Some would argue that it may not be the individual that Dublin people will get. The elected mayor is going to have to make executive decisions. I am not proposing this measure, but one of the things that Ken Livingstone did as mayor was to introduce a congestion charge in London, and while a lot of planning had been done on it, he had the power to execute that decision.

I was a councillor for 17 years and Deputy Eamon Ryan spoke about councillors and the responsibility for waste management being taken from them. My memory of that period was that many councillors did not want to exercise that power with regard to difficult, political areas. I hope a mayor will be different in his or her five year term, if we are looking at that type of term. Dubliners want an individual who will make those difficult decisions, some of which may be very unpopular but necessary, if taken fairly. Ken Livingstone's decision was well executed because it was well planned, it was not clumsy and it was not done overnight. Ameliorative measures had been put in place to ensure that it worked well.

With regard to the proposed Dublin regional development board for economic development, I agree that it would be great if we got to a point where the Dublin local authorities were not competing with each other for foreign direct investment - as Deputy Curran spoke about in last night's debate on this Bill - and if they specialised in different regions of the county. Parts of county might become identified as the pharma base, the tech base or as being strong in the food area and so on. We are way behind a lot of other cities and capital cities in that respect.

I say these things as constructive criticism but I have reservations about the capacity of the Bill to deliver what is necessary. I believe it is over prescriptive and outdated in parts. Most of the proposals in the Bill focus on the period following the election of a mayor. One of the purposes of the public consultation phase is to enable all stakeholders to have a say, from the chambers of commerce, IBEC, drugs task forces and immigrant communities. Immigrants can vote in local elections and there is a big immigrant community in Dublin, yet this Bill does not speak to it at all. That would not have been the case previously with minorities. Those immigrants all have a vote.

Since the debate last night people have been on to me saying that nothing was mentioned about the Irish language in Dublin.

These are all issues that will come back from the public consultation phase. For me, what Deputy Eamon Ryan has proposed is a cathaoirleach of a regional assembly. This is what I have pictured in my head, as opposed to someone who can make things happen. I could not see particular executive powers in the Bill screaming out at me and I was looking for them. A lot of power resides in the assembly. While I agree a mayor has to be accountable and constrained, he or she also must have the ability to make particular decisions.

I mentioned areas such as the arts and culture, but there is no mention of policing, smart city and climate change functions. If the electorate is to be won over, it needs to be able to identify that the mayor will have responsibility for specifics in advance of electing him or her, not after the election. The electorate will want to know the relationship the mayor will have with the bodies or organisations which will carry out these functions on his or her behalf. The Bill has the ability to feed into this process, but it is full of gaps and deficits. As the Minister pointed out, we are all part of one conversation, which I accept, with the greater and best interests of Dubliners and Dublin at heart.

I made the point yesterday evening that we had a unique opportunity because there was a minority Government. In different circumstances a Minister in a majority Government could push his or her ideas on a directly elected mayor and a regional assembly through Parliament like a coach and four. The Minister will go to his or her officials who have all of the expertise at their disposal. They also have the authority to call in the agencies to engage in consultation with all stakeholders to ensure the ideas and proposals they bring back can be proposed and amended by Members of the House in order that the eventual offering put to the people of Dublin will be one which has been agreed to by the House.

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