Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. I appreciate that 15 Senators spoke on the last occasion and that I am the seventh this evening. With the possible exception of Senator Ray Butler who rose straight to the top, everyone else present in the Chamber has served on local authorities, some of us for a little longer than others. The Minister of State joined the Seanad relatively quickly, but the dual mandate was still in place for a little while. Senator Jennifer Murnane O'Connor has even longer service than me. I had 12.5 years service and Senator Victor Boyhan was not too far behind me.

I enjoyed every minute I served as a councillor. I was chairperson of the former Dublin Regional Authority. I was also chairperson of the new Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly, while I was a member of an ETB, theatre boards and audit committees. The members of many of these bodies received no remuneration at all. The Pavilion Theatre's board was a great one to be on, but there was nothing extra for attending all of the extra meetings, travel and so on. DLR Properties Limited was the same. Almost no councillor is in it for the money because there is none. We are asking people to do a full-time job for what effectively is less than the minimum wage, given the number of hours councillors work per week and the time they spend at various functions, turning up at events, attending school prize nights, raffles and residents meetings and lobbying on behalf of constituents. The Minister of State is probably distracted, but I am making these points to him as much as to anyone else.

Councillors are the first port of call. One councillor told me that someone had rang him on Christmas Day because his cable television service was not working. He had to ring someone else. When he asked the person why he had not rang his sister, he said he would have had to pay. I was about to say "we" because I was a councillor for so long, but councillors become the first port of call. They work hard. If Dublin City Council had a ratio of 1:4,730 or whatever the figure was in the previous reform process, it would have 119 councillors, not 63. Fingal County Council would have 65 or 66; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council would have 44 or 45, while South Dublin County Council would have 51 or 52. Councillors on Dublin City Council might not cover enormous distances, but they have many constituents who, possibly because they have better broadband, are, by and large, able to send queries more quickly and who equally expect an immediate response.

When one is a councillor, everything one does is on one's own back. There is no secretarial or administrative support. Unless one is a wealthy person who is willing to pay for support out of his or her own resources, there is nothing available, save for the general support available within a local authority. I acknowledge that, by and large, local authority staff are helpful. Someone receives a representational payment of less than €17,000 per year to be a member of a local authority. For a long time and until recently, councillors were paying a 4% super tax called PRSI class K for nothing, as well as USC and normal taxes. We are taxing them as if they are employees.

I am unsure whether any other Senator has mentioned it, but I do not understand why councillors are the only ones in the entire public service who are not entitled to a pension. It would not be a large pension, given that it would be based on a small salary. A part-time worker in a local authority who works ten hours per week will receive a pension if he or she is there for long enough. It will be a small pension based on a small salary and a limited number of hours, but that person is entitled to something. We have councillors on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council with 29, 36 or 40 years of service. Many of them have 29 years of service. They put in a large amount of time, practically their whole lives. Many people would not work in any job for that length of time. At the end of it all, there is only a lump sum payment of a gratuity, with nothing for the long term.

Like Senators Victor Boyhan, Jennnifer Murnane O'Connor and so on, I attended the LAMA and AILG conferences. In Dungarvan and Donegal I listened to the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, outline the future. I welcome the establishment of a review group, but we must acknowledge that councillors are probably annoyed with certain Members of this House endlessly sending them emails promising them the sun, moon and stars when none of it materialises. There are those of us who have not been sending such emails because we are unsure of what is coming. I hope it is positive, but whatever it is, it needs to be articulated and decided soon. the local elections will be held just over a year from now. I believe 23 May 2019 is the date on which they will be held. I do not want to repeat a lot of the points that have been made but on the issue of vouched versus unvouched expenses, a lot of the expenses that councillors incur include things like buying raffle tickets or giving prizes for raffles, none of which is vouchable. I am not saying that it can be vouchable but we need to appreciate what an unvouched allowance means and that expenses are expenses. They are incurred because a councillor has incurred them. He or she has telephone and stationery bills, petrol costs, tyre replacement costs, vehicle expenses and so forth. All of these are expenses. No one says of people who happen to work in an office that they got their salary as well as the value of the desk at which they sit, the roof over their heads and the central heating. Apparently, if a person happens to use a room in his or her house as a full-time office, that person cannot claim any allowance for that, even though he or she is deprived of that room. If that person buys a filing cabinet or a desk, there is no allowance for that either.

We need good quality people. We need people to be in local government and not because they are independently wealthy. We want people to be representative of where they live. I strongly urge the Minister of State to consider what Senator Boyhan has referred to as a decent salary, but whatever is delivered should be enough for people to live on so that they are not travelling around the place in the hope of getting some expenses because that is the only way they can sustain their existence. Many councillors are effectively working full-time and are working very hard. We must recognise and appreciate the work they do and reward them appropriately.