Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I share the concern of some people that this legislation weakens democracy and strengthens bureaucracy, which is something we should always look out for. Despite the transfer of many functions from local government, including the transfer of roads to the National Roads Authority, the transfer of water to Irish Water, the transfer of higher education grants to SUSI, the centralisation of the driving licence system and the reduction in new house construction, bureaucracy at local government level has not been tackled. The Minister when responding to the debate might elaborate on how much of the McLoughlin report has been implemented.

County managers have grown extremely powerful. The feedback I get from people in local government is that there are too many directors of services and the system is unnecessarily bureaucratic. Concern was expressed earlier by Senator D'Arcy about the abolition of Dundalk Town Council. Some of the towns that will lose their town councils strike me as places that are well run in the context of the number of people visiting them. The Minister will be aware that Westport has led this particular movement. Other places like Lismore, Cashel, Kinsale, Bray, Ennis, Enniscorthy, Listowel, Killarney, Kells, Midleton, Naas, Birr, New Ross and Trim strike me as pretty well-run towns. Dispensing with their local democratically elected people in the context of the abolition of town councils weakens local democracy. I wonder if the tradition started by the late Frank Hall in the Ballymagash of typecasting of councillors is coming back to haunt us in this Bill.

I gather that some town councils cost approximately €5,000 per annum in terms of expenses. As regards whether they did a good job in terms of electing people, I always prefer "elected" rather than "selected" because this allows for change when the next election comes around. As stated by Senator Norris, I opposed the abolition of democratically elected people from Údarás na Gaeltachta, particularly in the context of the Government's gender quotas. We could have had very interesting candidates from the Gaelic speaking areas and from the town council areas if the new gender quotas in respect of particular parties had been adopted.

Senator Ó Murchú referred to Cashel and the boundaries. As far as I can see, boundaries are always in the wrong place. Some of the boundaries between the United States and Canada run through people's houses. Boundaries have to be drawn somewhere. While Senator Ó Murchú might consider the one between Cashel and the remainder of County Tipperary to be awkward, trying to figure out which county one is in when on the border of Fermanagh, Monaghan and Cavan is difficult. Boundaries have been in place for a long time. The fact that many of them may not suit modern managerialism should not detract from them. Thanks to the GAA, counties are enshrined forever in the Irish consciousness. They promote community awareness, which is important in getting the spirit going.

Perhaps during the next local or European elections the Minister might consult people in some of the towns concerned in regard to whether they want their town councils to be abolished. It is okay for people at the centre to say they do not like them but perhaps they, too, make mistakes.

Maybe, as with the case of the abolition for this House, some of the motivations to want to reduce the number of democratically elected people were not acceptable to the public at large despite the best advice of opinion polls and journalists writing on the basis of those opinion polls. Democracy is delicate and we should be willing to pay some price for it - a small one.

The Bill provides for a considerable amount of relabeling, including the chief executive for the county manager, the national oversight and audit commission for the local government auditor, the board of directors, and the powers to appoint the manager after he or she has been appointed by somebody else. That all seems to be just changing labels on the jars to some degree. In recent times, people in places such as Leixlip, Greystones and Shannon actually wanted local government. So it is not just in the 1854 Act and the various other Acts that people asked to have an elected local authority in their area, which gave them a sense of place. I am not sure that local government is as unpopular with the citizens as reflected in the Bill.

I welcome the Minister saying that he is willing to accept all reasonable amendments. Perhaps the Senators with more direct experience of local government than I have will be availing of his generous invitation in that regard. I commend him on that.

One of the Schedules lists the various Leader and other committees - approximately 50 in all - to be abolished. It would be helpful if we also had a list of the other bodies. I just picked out some town councils which seem to be doing a good job, but are still to be abolished.

Towards the end of his speech, the Minister said: "Through the new community and economic plan there will be a requirement for local authorities to consider the synergies between the LCDC and SPC for economic development processes, and to build an integrated plan that will be consistent and coherent with the development plan and the regional spatial and economic strategy, and responsive to the needs of the communities it applies to." I am concerned about the managerialism in that and the repeated use of the word "strategic" by central government. One of the entries under the word "strategic" in the Oxford English Dictionary refers to something designed to disorganise the enemy's economy and to destroy morale. Sometimes strategic plans have precisely that effect. If it means "important" in the mouths of people who say it so much, let us just call it "important".

The new structures and changing the names of the regional bodies do not seem to mean anything. I should have included that in the list of relabeling existing bodies. In general we should have some kind of impact assessment. This is very important legislation and I commend those who worked on it. However, it should focus on how much it is expected to save and what the gains are. Since this Seanad was elected, we have moved steadily away from appending with the explanatory memorandum some kind of quantification of what we are expecting to achieve, which makes it very difficult, as previous speakers have said, to check up afterwards if we ever accomplished the goals we set out to do.

I thank the Minister for his work on the Bill and his openness and generosity to those who wish to table amendments. I have misgivings and I am not at all sure this is a great day for Irish democracy. Bearing in mind that this House was threatened with abolition, there were no Senators in Government Buildings on the night in September 2008 when the €64 billion walked out, nor were there any local authority members in there either. Why do we not concentrate some time on the people who were there and did so much damage, which the Minister and his Cabinet colleagues with our support have been trying to correct.

How much of a problem do we have here?

What alternatives have been considered in order to resolve it and why was this particular alternative chosen? While I welcome both the Minister and the legislation, I have many caveats and do not know how well the people are being served in this regard. I believe opinion polls should have been conducted nationwide. Were everyone to agree with the Minister that all the town councils should go, that would be fine and I would support him. However, there could well be people for whom this legislation is not welcome and Members must consult with and represent them here in the interests of the better governance of the country, a goal which all Members share with the Minister and the Cabinet.