Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

In raising this Adjournment matter I call for the establishment of a comprehensive review of the Local Government Act 2001 with a view to addressing the democratic deficit through greater empowerment and resourcing of local public representatives. A competitive report carried out a number of years ago found that Ireland had the most centralised system of local government as against any other country in the world. When one looked at the centralised systems of many of the eastern bloc communist countries, and China, that speaks volumes for the system we have. Coupled with that is the City and County Management (Amendment) Act 1955, which took much of the democratic powers from local authority members and handed them to the county managers. The whole area of subsidiarity needs to be injected into the system.

The reason for my proposal is that there is widespread dissatisfaction among the public and members of local authorities that the good purpose and intention of the 2001 Act has not been realised. One of the purposes of the Act was to put the councillor centre stage, so that he or she had a real democratic input into the system. I have done some surveys and find that four councillors to one are dissatisfied, which equates generally with countrywide discontent as regards the workings of the Act. One of the main purposes of the Local Government Act 2001 was to shift the balance of power towards members and this has not happened.

The corporate policy groups were to be a pivotal and fundamental part of that initiative. Dissatisfaction with the operation of the corporate policy groups, according to the surveys, accounts for 70%, as against 30% who are satisfied. This disparity reflects a significant level of dissatisfaction. The corporate policy group, in effect, was expected to operate on the basis of a mini-cabinet. From a trawl I have carried out of the minutes of many local authority corporate policy groups, it is obvious that nothing of fundamental importance is being included on their agendas. These routinely comprise administrative and ordinary matters that are scheduled and dealt with at county council meetings.

This raises a question and I am not sure whether the Minister of State will have the answer. What specific training was given to the cathaoirligh and mayors of local authorities, particularly county and city councillors as well as members of corporate policy groups, to ensure that they would operate effectively? Again, that was one of the areas identified at that stage in the 2001 Act, namely, that training of councillors was to be an essential component for improving the system.

There is somewhat more satisfaction with the strategic policy committees, SPCs. Some 57% declared themselves dissatisfied, but 43% are satisfied that they make a contribution to councils. That probably illustrates that if the positives from many councils, where they seem to be working effectively, can be identified and transferred to other local authorities, and the negatives addressed by perhaps giving much greater scope to the chairs of SPCs, we could see a significant improvement in that area. A question put to councillors as regards leadership within the councils showed that 47% were in favour of a full-time cathaoirleach. The question of a directly elected cathaoirleach, which was opposed by many councillors at the time, now has support among 43%, with 57% opposing.

Among the chairs of SPCs, some 18% believed they should be full-time posts and just short of a quarter of the councillors believed that given the enormous workload and various reports coming before councils, there was now a demand for their far greater and even full-time involvement. The submission of the three representative bodies, General Council of County Councils, the Association of Municipal Authorities in Ireland and the Local Authority Members Association, prior to the enactment of the 2001 Act, suggested that there should be a transfer of executive decisions to the corporate policy group, which should function as a mini-cabinet, with a full-time chair, and other members — whether chairs of SPCs or area committees — in part-time positions. There is a real need for every councillor to have, at least, an office in the council, so that he or she may have a base from which to operate and undertake his or her responsibilities.

As part of the review I suggest that the whole area of councillors' recompense should be looked at. Good progress has been made in this regard, and that has been acknowledged in recent years. Nevertheless, some 43% of councillors expressed satisfaction with the small salary being paid but significantly, 57% were dissatisfied with it, which I considered to be relatively high. However, there is probably a need for this to be reviewed to bring it to the equivalent of a third of a Senator's salary, the level that was sought by the representative bodies at the time.

With regard to the vexed questions of councillors' pensions, which has been raised in this House on a number of occasions, this has support among 89% of councillors, with just 11% opposed. While I acknowledge that justifiably, the gratuity has been significantly improved, much rubbish has been talked by those who oppose the pensions initiative. Many councillors, as all of us know, in order to meet their commitments as public local representatives, have undertaken part-time job sharing. They do this with a commensurate loss of income and subsequently the loss of pension entitlements. They should not be discriminated against, as the only public servants who do not qualify. This should be part of the overall comprehensive review. Given the level of dissatisfaction and valleys in customer service from local authorities, the system would benefit from an impartial review. Any such review, as happened on the last occasion, should not be crowded with county managers, all of whom have vested interests and an axe to grind. If they are to be involved, there should be a balancing opinion from elected local authority members and independent reviewers. The local government system which annually spends billions of euro and employs 35,000 people must be optimised to meet future demands.