Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Whatever way we look at this, it is a historic day for Limerick as this Bill is progressing. At the start, the Minister of State rightly thanked Tim O'Connor and the implementation advisory group for their report as well as the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage for its report. I wish a lot of the recommendations in both of those reports were included in this Bill but unfortunately they have not been.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. For myself and the people of Limerick it is an extremely important matter that has for far too long been put on the long finger by the Government. Unfortunately, as the Bill stands it falls short of a meaningful change of local government. As I see it, it offers us a ceremonial mayoral role as opposed to a position with meaningful powers and influence. It certainly is not a beacon of progress that other local authorities will wish to aspire to. It has the hallmarks of the County and City Management Association all over it and has destroyed the potential of a truly democratically elected local mayor of Limerick with devolved responsibilities, someone who would have made a change for the better. As we start, it is one-nil to the County and City Management Association.

In January 2022, the then Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, said that this is about giving the role a lot of powers and creating the best possible template for other local authorities if they want to replicate it. He said that if we are serious about devolving power, this is the way. In fairness, who will rush to replicate this version of a democratically elected mayor? An Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, in a response to myself, noted that there is some bureaucratic resistance from certain departments when it comes to the delegation and devolution of functions and unfortunately we have seen that. The role does not seem to have a lot of power so it seems that those certain departments won out and an opportunity for a seismic shift from centralised power has been squandered.

The people of Limerick voted to establish a directly elected mayor for Limerick city council on 24 May 2019. Here we are in September 2023, four years later, discussing the Bill on Second Stage. This is far too long a gap and the continuous delay has dampened the original appetite for this legislation. Before the first mayor of this office has been elected, we face a challenge in ensuring the level of public interest in the establishment of the office and the election of someone to it. I remind the Minister of State that a similar plebiscite was held in Waterford and Cork and the proposition was defeated in both counties. In Limerick, it narrowly passed and I fear the Government's lethargic approach to this matter has further damaged the will needed to ensure there is a reasonable turn-out for the first election. I emphasise the need for public engagement on this issue.

Considering the timeline, the Government has moved at a glacial pace. The Government approved the general scheme on 20 April 2021. The then Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, said in early July 2022 that the drafting of the Bill was at an advanced stage and that publication had been identified as a priority. In March 2023 the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, said it would be ready for April and we saw the Bill introduced towards the end of summer. Who has been pushing back and where has the resistance come from?

As for the Bill itself, we welcome the legislation broadly but there are some critical points that the Bill has either failed to address or has fudged to such a degree that the role originally proposed to the people of Limerick is not reflected in what is contained in the Bill. Sinn Féin will be submitting amendments. In the time remaining to me, I will outline some of my and my party's concerns about this legislation.

First, I contend that there is no meaningful devolution of powers from central government to the office of a directly elected mayor of Limerick. Following the decision of Limerick voters, an implementation advisory group, IAG, which the Minister of State mentioned, was commissioned. Public consultation was greatly restricted by the onset of the Covid pandemic, as we all remember. However, they received 927 responses and produced a worthy report which considered proposals regarding the establishment of a directly elected mayor for Limerick. Sinn Féin was the only party to make a submission to this group. In its document, the IAG noted that international experience points to devolution going hand in hand with the creation of mayoral offices with increased State investment being provided as an incentive. The IAG made a number of suggestions around devolved functions from central government. Very few if any are contained in the Bill in its current form. The legislation in its current form definitively specifies only the powers of the current cathaoirleach and chief executive, saying a sensible few be transferred to the mayor. There is scant detail on the devolution of necessary powers from central government to the mayor in the realms of transport, waste management, the public realm or tourism. Having read the Bill closely a number of times, I struggle to see where any of these new devolved powers are. The IAG in its report recommended that the directly elected mayor should be empowered to commission a major programme of housing provision, building on the Housing for All proposals by the Government. This was dropped. The IAG also proposed that the directly elected mayor would have a right in law to be consulted on all matters relating to Garda resourcing in Limerick city and county, in particular on any special expert forum established in respect of antisocial behaviour.

This is absent from the Bill. I recognise the establishment of a Limerick mayor and the Government's consultative forum as a positive, but more power should have been devolved to the new mayoral role at the outset. I appreciate that the consultative forum has the potential to make recommendations to the Minister regarding the conferral of such additional functions on the mayor as it considers necessary, but there is no expectation set in the Bill that he or she will have to seriously consider any such recommendations.

More devolved powers should be specifically specified in the Bill. We want Limerick to be the reference point for other areas throughout the State where the establishment of a directly elected mayor is a feasible possibility. For instance, the power to acquire land is absent from the proposed powers. This would be an important function to give the mayor real power. Additionally, there is nothing to show the mayor as an advocate for workers' rights. Without additional powers, other areas will rightly see the role in Limerick as a fundamentally ceremonial one. Unfortunately, with such limited powers, I cannot see other areas looking for it, so perhaps the city and county managers did get their wish.

The Limerick regeneration projects were launched in 2008. The regeneration of certain areas of Limerick was long overdue. The ambitions of the 2008 plan were prompted by an horrific attack on two young children. It followed a particularly fraught time for Limerick when several murders occurred during an inter-gang feud across the city. There were three aspects to the regeneration of the areas: social, economic and physical. Thankfully, the worst of the violence is behind us and, in its absence, many of the areas impacted have flourished and now have thriving communities, but due to cuts in funding and a failure to deliver on the ambitions of the original plan, there remains a need for a continued focus on these areas.

The remit of the Limerick regeneration framework implementation plan that was developed expires this year. While the regeneration has failed in many aspects, there are other aspects we could count as success. The implementation plan is key to that. The decade-long remit concludes this year and the implementation group argue that any successive plan should have been established under the devolved power of a directly elected mayor. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the Limerick regeneration programme in the Bill or the establishment of a successor plan being devolved to an elected mayor. The authors of the Bill have missed a step here. A new plan and the devolution of control of it should have been included. While great progress has been made on many aspects, there remains marginalisation and despondency in some regeneration areas. The regeneration plan remains a key tool in improving these communities, providing resources to them, and ensuring that the progress made over the past 13 years is not stymied.

One of the items we highlighted in the Sinn Féin submission to the pre-legislative scrutiny was that the mayoral role should set a good example to employers in the region and have an ambassadorial role in respect of paying employees a living wage and introducing just transition initiatives. While paying employees will remain the remit of the council, it is disappointing that the Bill makes no mention of such an ambassadorial role and is entirely devoid of any reference to just transition initiatives.

One final area of the Bill that I would like to briefly touch on is the establishment of the Limerick mayoral advisory and implementation committee. The early establishment of such a committee is necessary and welcome. I am supportive of the eight functions of the committee as listed. However, I have some concerns regarding the make-up of the committee. In the proposal, the committee will consist of the mayor, members of the council appointed by the mayor, as the mayor considers appropriate, and other such persons nominated by nominating bodies appointed by the mayor, as the mayor considers appropriate. I have concerns about the powers of appointment to the committee vested in the mayor, as it has the potential to become a non-critical chamber that simply rubber-stamps the mayor's position on any matter. That cannot be good for anybody.

What we are discussing today falls short of the dynamic change and approach to local government that people in Limerick were expecting. We will table amendments to the Bill on Report Stage. It is disappointing that we have such a diluted version of what we had hoped for in empowering local government. However, I reiterate that we welcome the Bill. We believe it is an historic start. I think the Minister has got it wrong, but we can fix it. If the Bill goes ahead, we can amend it later and we can review it in two or three years as well.

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