Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak. The Minister of State may look at Senators speaking passionately on the matter of councillors' rights with a small bit of cynicism. I would not necessarily blame him as the vast majority of Senators are here because we got elected by councillors, in the main. We did the circuit and we went around to all the different meetings. To be frank, the vast majority of councillors to whom I spoke were more concerned with national issues, although there were always concerns about the terms and conditions of the job at hand. Many people have spoken on this and I do not really want to repeat what has been said.

Before I came into politics, there was a general perception of councillors that was quite negative. Being from Dublin and having gone through the 1980s and the tribunals, the assumption was that a councillor's reputation was not great. I was elected to a local authority in 2004 and I was in the north inner city. I am very taken by Senator Black's comments on the responsibilities that councillors had in the north inner city, where I was elected. My mind was blown first because party whip and affiliation are well down the list of priorities when it comes to being a councillor. It is not like being in here or in the Dáil and there is not the same adversarial nature of party politics on the council. Councillors genuinely work across parties and there is not a strict whip system. If one goes to a public meeting, councillors generally work hand in glove in trying to get matters resolved. Councillors deal with matters that are very sensitive, such as parks, playgrounds and the public space, which is very important. I first ran for election because the library closest to where I taught in Sheriff Street did not open on a Saturday for some bizarre reason. I learned that was because the local authority decided it should not open on Saturdays. When I was elected we engaged with other parties, councillors and the city management and after a period the library was opened on Saturdays. It is that public space that they defend and advocate for and it is extremely important, as are the committees on which councillors sit.I was unable to sit on a remarkable number of committees because I was teaching at the same time as I was a councillor. They included the local drugs task force. I appreciate the comments made by Senator Conway-Walsh on the rural-urban divide and I accept that the comparison between rural and urban councillors is not necessarily fair considering the distances the former must travel. However, in various parts of the country, including cities, local authority members must attend crucial meetings dealing with life and death issues, for example, meetings of local drugs task forces.

Councillors have to become experts on everything overnight, from planning and drugs to traffic and ramps. Members of the education and training boards, previously known as vocational educational committees, must become experts in education. Councillors clearly take their responsibilities extremely seriously and the concern is that the only people who will be attracted to run for local election are those who have time on their hands or enough money to allow them to do the job. It would be a dangerous development if the only people attracted to local politics were those with time and money.

A large number of members of Dublin City Council resigned during my time as a councillor from 2004 until 2011. Most resignations were not related to political concerns or the reasons that Senators or Deputies resign but genuinely because some of those who ran for election in 2004 and 2009 did not realise the workload they would have and what was expected of them. A great deal is expected of local councillors. Following the resignations, those who were co-opted to take the vacant seats also found the job very difficult.

In fairness to the Minister of State, he gave a commitment on this issue at a meeting of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party. Perhaps Senators will be invited to the next such meeting. He also established a review with an independent chair, which will report by the end of the year. I am willing to accept that commitment and I will support the Minister of State in his endeavours in this regard. I look forward to the findings of the group. I will give him a fair wind by assuming the review will come up with the goods by the end of year.

I do not need to rehearse the arguments made by previous speakers. The jibes and jokes made about councillors are hurtful, for example, when they are asked how many brown envelopes they received in the previous week. Before I entered public life and ran for election, I made similar types of jokes. I subsequently observed that, regardless of political background or party, local representatives worked thanklessly, day in, day out on nitty-gritty issues and were always willing to engage with other political representatives. During my time on Dublin City Council, I joined the four other councillors in the north inner city, Christy Burke, Thomas Stafford, Emer Costello and Mick Rafferty, at many meetings across the north inner city which were attended by more councillors than residents. Sometimes people do not realise the commitment, time, dedication, knowledge and expertise councillors give to their work. They are supposedly part-time and if they are at a financial disadvantage and find they cannot keep going, they will resign which is a very difficult decision to make when one has secured a mandate and then finds one cannot continue to represent one's electorate.

If Members of the Oireachtas were honest, we would admit that between 80% and 90% of the work we do is council related. Who are at the front line of the housing crisis? It is councillors who must deal with local authority waiting lists and so forth. For this reason, having love bombed the Minister of State just now and another Fine Gael Party Minister yesterday, I was disappointed by the communication circulated by the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to local authority members concerning their ability to make representations on planning applications. That was a bad, unfortunate and regrettable move because councillors know their areas well and are entitled to make representations on planning applications. Having said that, I agree with all the sentiments expressed by Senators on the work done by councillors. I am concerned, however, by the number of councillors who are resigning and the type of person who will be in a position to run for local office in future. We will support the review mechanism proposed by the Minister of State in the hope that it will produce the goods.