Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I support the amendment. It may be that small is beautiful. The managerial speak of the Department with responsibility for local government from many of its manuals, which are about 20 years out of date, assume that people at the top know better than others what they should think and do. The problem with that is that it comes without numbers. We have numbers from an bord snip nua, which I put on the record yesterday, that the number of senior civil servants rose by 72% in a period in which the number of ordinary civil servants rose by 27%, and we also had two rounds of benchmarking. If we had done the numbers on whether things are best localised or centralised, we might get a different result than that which is assumed, namely, that big is beautiful and that small is ugly. I am concerned there is a momentum behind this that operates without reference to the numbers.

I would cite Mr. McLoughlin in the review group's report and I wish more Ministers would update us on his report, a point to which I return. He dealt with the impact of the moratorium on recruitment in a paper he presented to the Kenmare conference two years ago and found that the number of directors was down by 7%, clerical and administration staff were down by 4%, professional and technical staff were down by 3.7% and outdoor staff were down by 13%. Too much managerialism in the system leads to loss of appreciation of what can be done locally. Mr. McLoughlin had an interesting photograph in his paper of a man called Andre digging a hole, obviously depicting the productive part of local government and he had nine managers looking at it, and they said "We might need to get rid of Andre as part of our new efficiently drive". There should be an annual report at this stage on the progress of the implementation of the recommendations in Mr. McLoughlin's report.

Yesterday I mentioned Jennifer Hough's article which set out that there are five directors of services in a local authority in a small county such as Carlow while Westmeath, with nearly twice the population, gets by with two. In the same article, Ms Hough observed that having read what the Minister, Deputy Hogan, had to say in the Seanad debate, "all Mr. Hogan offered was more platitudes and the promise of yet another report". Moreover, elsewhere in the article she noted "the Dublin city librarian earns more than the prime minister of Spain". Consequently, one must consider different ways to deliver local government. At present it appears to be highly bureaucratic, at a time when it is getting rid of the outdoor workers. In addition, one must know what managerial efficiencies will be available on foot of the loss of large functions in respect of roads, housing, health and refuse collection. Members also have voted recently to transfer the administration of driving licences to the people in Ballina and responsibility for water is about to be moved out. When do such managers actually become accountable? Should the concept that small is beautiful not be considered in respect of local government? There is a problem and I am unsure whether the Custom House as a whole is addressing seriously these issues, even though the Secretary General of the Department sat on the group that produced the McLoughlin report. The House should be told the numbers from these efficiencies and the gains. While everyone supports the need to reform this country because of the difficulties in which we find ourselves, I hope that when Ministers make speeches about local government in Ireland without referring to the McLoughlin report, it is not because they intend that it simply go away if nothing is done about it. Ministers must confront the senior people in county councils and in the Department itself to ascertain what they are doing because they are extremely expensive and there appears to be less and less product emerging at the far end. Perhaps it is time to have more localisation in local government as proposed in this amendment.