Fiach MacConghail (Independent)

Fáilte isteach, Minister, go dtí an Seanad. Unlike previous speakers I have no mandate in that I was nominated by the Taoiseach but this debate offers me an opportunity to learn about and understand the idea of local government reform. I have some experience in that I am a political scientist by training and have spent some time on a series of citizens' projects.

The Minister made a very good speech. This debate gives all of us with our different backgrounds an opportunity to contribute and inform and to be briefed by the Minister but also to put some ideas to him. The Minister suggested that he has an enormous task. He must take his time with it. There are many elements to it and I might highlight some those tensions and, hopefully, support him in the forthcoming terms.

It has been a busy week for the Minister. Tomorrow is an historic day for him also in that he will introduce the Second Stage of the Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill. I acknowledge that it is all happening in the Seanad.

Last year I spent two months travelling the country and attending meetings on participatory democracy. I was chair of We the Citizens, a non-political party group which set out to prove that citizens who participate in a deliberative way can effect change and contribute in a greater and more profound way to the political system. We proved that a citizen's voice, through a citizens assembly model, can make a difference and contribute to a shift in our political culture and participation. I know through the programme for Government that there are strong policy areas on how to enhance the way citizens should participate in society and politics. I look forward to the debate today and tomorrow in which I believe the Seanad can come up with strong and important ideas to support this aspect of the programme for Government. What I have learned from We the Citizens and what I heard at every public meeting throughout Ireland is the hunger and willingness of citizens to get more involved in local democracy. Voting is not enough. What happens in between elections is what we are trying to resolve and discuss today, namely, how to increase participation and trust between the institutions and our citizens in this republic. Irish citizens have started to expect more from democracy and want to take part. Deliberative democracy at a local level can work and the more citizens who are involved in local decision making, the healthier our political culture will be.

We the Citizens proved conclusively that citizens can understand and take tough decisions if they have all the information and facts at their disposal and that this strengthens the political system and enhances our democracy at both a local and national level. That is what I would like to see as a result of local government reform. Profound reform at local level will liberate reform at Oireachtas level. If we devolve more power and decision making to local level, the Dáil and the Seanad will enhance their role as the policy making and legislative forums that they set out to be.

I will not go into detail today on the various bodies and histories of recommendations on local government reform over the years but I would like acknowledge the excellent work and convey my thanks to the Oireachtas Library and Research Service in briefing me well on this. Regarding the programme for Government, the following three sources have had some influence on Government thinking: the Green Paper on Local Government Reform in 2008, the McCarthy report in 2009 and the Local Government Efficiency Review Group of 2010. I understand, and the Minister indicated in his speech, that he has set up an implementation group and is awaiting its recommendations. In what timeframe might that happen? Will that process result in a White Paper and, if so, how would it be disseminated?

The great challenge facing the Minister and all legislators in the Oireachtas is how measures to enhance democracy and decentralise power can best be implemented in the context of cost-saving steps which will undoubtedly be implemented. How can we reconcile the following three objectives of the Minister's local reform agenda, namely, cost savings, to increase the efficiency of services and to devolve power to the citizens? They are not mutually exclusive of each other but cost savings could make local government more remote from the people and amalgamations could be more expensive.

The four areas of reform, the first of which is to rebalance power within local government in favour of elected representatives. We could and probably should discuss this at length in this House and we could have a full day discussion on that area alone in terms of directly elected majors, the proposal to replace managers with CEOs and how this would relate to increased powers of councillors. A second area of reform is to devolve power from central government to local government. How many tiers should there be, how should it work and should it be across county council boundaries or county boundaries? The third area of reform is to create greater efficiencies and save costs, and the fourth area of reform is to enhance ways for citizens to participate. The deliberate budgeting process in Recife in Brazil is a great example of this where nearly 20% of the adult population was involved in some way in the 2009 budgeting process. Its impact in that region of Brazil has been significant in terms of influencing the direction of public expenditure, some €220 million over ten years, as well as broadening and deepening democratic processes every day. These four categories of reform are all linked. We need to achieve them in tandem and to have a debate that would include the citizens whom ultimately it will serve and protect.

There can be tensions between these goals. A critical question when considering the Government's policy is how well the policies increasing efficiencies fit with the Government's policy to reorganise local governance structures fundamentally to allow for devolution of much greater decision making. Can we save money by sharing costs - the Minister touched on this - such as ICT, audit committees and human resource services but devolve increased power and responsibility to the local areas in the categories of budgeting, raising taxes, housing and roads?

According to an excellent research paper, Is big really so efficient? Investigating assumptions concerning local government reform and amalgamation, by Mark Callanan, Ronan Murphy and Aodh Quinlivan, a wonderful paper that I urge all Members to read, we in Ireland are deeply wedded to the view that bigger is better, or a more specific variance is that bigger is cheaper, means improved services and is more efficient. These have been assumptions underpinning recent proposals for public sector reorganisation and reform with the suggestion that a larger organisational structure will cost less, lead to better services for citizens and ultimately be more efficient. Rather than being expressed openly, these assumptions frequently exist as an implicit rationale behind changes that are usually labelled as rationalisations of structures.

Another myth or issue that has been raised is that Ireland has too many local authorities, particularly too many city and county councils - we have 34. Research undertaken and mentioned in the paper to which I referred shows that we are way down the league table when it comes to our having a close relationship with citizens. France, Switzerland, Austria, the United States, Germany, Canada, Finland, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Portugal all have much closer links to citizens that we do. We should investigate how we could improve that. We are more remote from our citizens than we think. Therefore, the notion that amalgamations might be the answer to greater connections and more efficiencies might not be true. One of the glaring facts I discovered in my research and interest in this area is the lack of evidence and data in support of proposals that a smaller number of larger local authorities would yield improvements savings and efficiencies.