Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I am going to put that aside for the moment and make more general points. I have very mixed opinions on whether this is the right way to approach the matter. I believe it is an absolute illusion that we are giving power to a mayor. I respect the people of Limerick who have voted for it; I fully respect the democratic decision. However, I think it is an illusion that we are now bringing more democracy. We are doing exactly the opposite. Since the day I came into this Dáil I am fascinated by the misuse of language. In my experience at local level for 17 years, I watched first-hand the diminution and reduction of the powers of councillors. In the hundred years, we have reduced the number of councillors, we have reduced the urban councils and we have taken away essential powers. I do not see a reason for having councillors at all, really, at this point. I am saying that in a very cynical way. They pass the city development plan which, as has been pointed out, is overruled by the Planning Regulator. I support the Planning Regulator. I have said on the record of this House that the Planning Regulator role arose out of corruption, out of the findings of the various tribunals that are ongoing in terms of cost. That is where it came from. However, the nub of it is captured there, in that no Government has really trusted councillors. I have my own difficulties and I was a councillor. I have seen many rezonings against planners' advice. Therein is the nub. Do we let local democracy work and give power to councillors to make decisions, or do we not? We have not done that. We have taken power from them. Some 8% of Irish public spending goes to local government as opposed to 23% at EU level. As has been pointed out more than once, we are nearly bottom of the list in terms of democracy or services that we give. Theoretically we deliver 1,105 services on behalf of 30 Government Departments. Theoretically, councils are doing an awful lot but in reality they have absolutely no power except to bring in the county or city development plan. They come under extraordinary pressure then to pass zonings or not, which leaves a lot to be desired. That is the mess we have left them in with no real power.

In my time, we took the waste management power from councillors, disgracefully so. The city council in Galway did its best to bring in a waste management plan at the time. We put an emphasis on zero waste and recycling 23 years ago. Sometimes I get tired listening to myself because I am repeating things. We brought in a waste management plan that was specifically focused on the city and the county. I am listening to these new words such as "the circular economy" 23 years later and, Jesus, Government policy stopped the people of Galway when they led the way through their councillors. The Government led us by the nose and took that away from us. Then there is Uisce Éireann. I do not want to demonise Uisce Éireann or cast aspersions on them. The decision should have never been made. The expertise was within the city councils and county councils and we took it off them instead of building it up. Some 40% or so of the water was being wasted and we did not have enough staff to deal with that. We had all the expertise and then we lost it. We lost all that institutional experience and memory and gave it to Irish Water. Then we blamed Irish Water for mistakes and all sorts of things, when really the problem was that we reduced local democracy. We have done that over and over.

Then we talk about a directly elected mayor. Cork refused it, and Waterford. Galway was to have a directly elected mayor. However, we were punished in lots of ways, were we not? We did not go with the Government approach to amalgamate the city and the county. We were told to amalgamate. Does the Minister of State remember that legislation that was brought before us? I have to thank the Seanad. They stopped it. We were going to make it bigger when really the approach should be going smaller, more local, more in control. When we did not go that way we were punished.

I have correspondence here from the county council. They have repeatedly drawn us in - local authority - finances - population and so on. That is the county council begging us, appealing to us, telling us they are underfunded. The Ceann Comhairle wants me to be quick but it is difficult when I have just got one chance. In case the Minister of State doubts me, on 20 June 2023 they wrote to us pointing out that Galway County Council is one of the worst underfunded councils in the country. They cannot do the work that in theory they are supposed to be doing. This was confirmed by the independent reports that were done at the time of the proposed amalgamation. One of their strongest recommendations was to sort out the finance problem in Galway County Council before any progress could possibly be made on amalgamating the two. Of course it never happened. All of the Deputies have stood together on this one to say it is not possible to provide services from a county council that covers the three Aran Islands, Inishbofin, all of Connemara and further east with a very limited budget. We have campaigned for years to get biodiversity officers, for example. We finally got one on each council. We declared a climate emergency years ago and we had no biodiversity officer until last year. I mention that as a specific example because every time we raised it we were told the post had to be approved by Government. Even in terms of employing staff, the councils seem to have no power whatsoever.

Then I come to housing. The last time we built a public house in Galway was 2009. I deplore the words "social housing". It is public housing and we should open it up for everybody, have controlled rents, extend it and raise the threshold. We did not build one single public house in Galway from 2009 on. We got quarterly reports and in the last paragraph was "construction suspended." It did not start again until 2020 or 2021, and we wonder why there is a housing crisis. On the deficit in democracy, various people have said it.

Just two weeks ago in Sligo, the association that represents councillors nationally made very in-depth presentations on the deficit in local democracy compared with other countries. A presentation from a Dr. Murphy in Maynooth has similarly outlined in a paper comparisons in Europe, broader than the European Union and the Council of Europe, and we are bottom of the list.

I am going around in a circle to say that I am standing here with very mixed opinions on the election of a mayor. My heart and soul tells me a directly elected mayor is the right thing. What could be wrong with giving power to the people? However, to me, it is nothing more than a distraction from the failure of successive Governments to deal with the deficit locally. That is despite Green Papers, White Papers and all sorts of various things. I understand that a commission was proposed in 2014 that would look at how we would give more power to local authorities, but that went nowhere. What happened in 2014 is that we copper-fastened the corporate mentality. Rather than a council being there to serve and to give essential services, that has all gone by the board and we have copper-fastened the very mentality that has led us to a crisis point in terms of climate change. We have profit, corporatisation and a stealing of language. I must tell the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, that I despaired when I was part of a corporate policy group and we were spending hours looking at a corporate plan in a city that was crying out for leadership, housing, health, water and all the other essential services. We were spending hours wasting time looking at a corporate plan. That came from 2014 but it was there before. Then we got rid of the name "manager" and we brought in "CEO". That is not what local authorities should be about. They are there for the people; to be led by the people, with elections by the people and power given to them. I have a difficulty with that given my own experience, but therein is the nub of it. I also have difficulty with governments, because democracy is not perfect. We need to give the power back. They may make bad decisions and they may make good decisions; but the people will decide then. We will empower the people. That is what the Lisbon treaty was to do. Most of it was for the militarisation of Europe and the commodification of every known service and then they put in this little paragraph - I think it was Article 10 - to say that decisions should be made as close as possible to the people. Can one imagine that for cynicism. While we take it away completely, we copper-fasten it in the Lisbon treaty that decisions should be made as close as possible to the people. I could go on as I have eight minutes left but I will give it up.

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