Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cities, boroughs and municipal districts with county towns and towns over 20,000 population will retain mayoral status.

Senator Landy raised a couple of other matters regarding the merger of the organisations. We will have a good discussion with the Association of County and City Councils, ACCC, and the Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland, AMAI. I welcome the president of the AMAI, Councillor Willie Callaghan. I assure him and his colleagues that over the coming months I shall work closely with his organisation on the legislation. I expect that the legislation will be published before the summer recess but it will not be passed before then. People will have plenty of opportunities over the summer months and into the autumn session to study the legislation and to improve it, where possible. Senator Landy and other Members sought more time to peruse the legislation. Between now and the end of the year should be sufficient time to pass the legislation.

Senator Keane raised another key matter, namely, the relationship between a manager and a local authority member. At the moment it is a relationship. Often councillors do not realise the extent of the influence that they can bring to bear on the outcome of a process, not just budgets and development plans but for many other issues. We want to make it a lot more explicit as to who has the power and responsibility to deliver each of the service plans. I want to ensure that the manager is the chief executive officer on the board of directors of the democratically elected local councillors and that the councillors will have the final say in the outcome, in as much as we possibly can outside of the normal doctor-client relationship, of issues such as the allocation of housing or whatever the appropriate mechanism is established to ensure there is no corruption or bias in the system, which would also be against the best wishes of the citizen. The councillors, as far as possible, will be the locally elected people who, in turn, will hold the position of a board of directors in order to facilitate the chief executive carrying out his or her wishes, not the other way around like at present. Several Senators had raised the matter.

I know that Senator Barrett has had a lot of experience of a State body because of the many matters that arose when merging the health system. I am sure that he had an interesting experience when the health authorities merged into one. I am also sure that he would be aware of the difficulties that would arise if we tried to reverse the merger and grant greater devolved responsibility at local level. It was a fundamental mistake to centralise the health system into a major bureaucracy. Unfortunately we can all see how difficult it would be to reverse its role and try to create a better delivery of services. The health service was established for the wrong reason, to put a structure in place rather than how best to deliver services to the citizen.

I want to assure Senator Barrett about the efficiencies that I mentioned in the McLoughlin report which consisted of 106 recommendations. I will implement 105 of the recommendations. I shall not implement the recommendation to retain the manager. The McLoughlin report recommended 21 local authorities, not 34. I shall not put a manager in charge of several other counties or regional managers because people are entitled to know who is in charge of each local authority. We can co-ordinate many services regionally and nationally and that is essential. We identified ¤511 million of savings under the McLoughlin report and ¤420 million will be in addition to that sum due to better procurement and delivery of services and fewer people at senior management level. In the policy statement we have provided for a merger of directors of service, fire officers, librarians and people at senior level. In my view there is no need to have a county librarian in every county and one can leave a sufficiently qualified person in charge on a regional basis or group a couple of counties together. For better local government we do not need such a high level of senior management that has built up.

We are going to reverse what is occurring and have middle and lower management to protect front-line services. I agree with the Senator totally that it is not acceptable to have very little change at senior level and considerable change affecting front-line services delivered by outdoor staff. I am trying to redress this through the workforce planning process. There is provision for 500 voluntary retirements at senior management level as part of our policy proposals.

Senator Sean D. Barrett should note that many private entities that were regarded as pillars of society also got things wrong, including the boards of banks, for example. We should not ignore these either. The individuals concerned put themselves forward as candidates for State boards. I am sure Governments came under pressure from many of these wonderful people who were not exactly doing much in the best interests of the country or the private entities they were representing. We must acknowledge that people are paid a lot of money in the private sector also. An example is the payment of a salary of ¤1 million, on top of share options, to an individual in the food sector. This is one area we could consider also. The staff are doing a great job, but I am sure they are not worth ¤1 million, in addition to share options. The private and public sectors could get together a little more often and talk about what is a realistic return on their investment in terms of human capital. Those at the lower levels in society and those working hard to make senior management positions available are often driven to despair over the extent to which senior managers are paid.

I assure Senator Sean D. Barrett that 8,500 people have left the local government service in the past four years. This represents the highest rate of departure in any area of the public service. There was a reduction in staff from 37,000 in mid-2008 to 28,500 today. This represents a substantial contribution to dealing with the fiscal problems we face. Despite the reductions, however, local authorities are expected to deliver a quality service.

Senator David Cullinane mentioned Waterford, as he does regularly. I would expect him to do so, but I assure him the actions taken in Waterford were to improve its status, as Senator Maurice Cummins stated. What did the gateway status the city had for so long achieve for it? There is no point in having status if one does not have resources or implementable development plans. Everywhere has status such as hub or gateway status, but such status is meaningless if one does not have the resources to implement the plans associated therewith. I am sorry the Senator did not acknowledge that I had kept the councils in Galway city and county apart. Obviously, those concerned do not get on.