Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I know it is not exactly his role, but I suppose he is here to bring the message back. I will not attack him personally.

The recently-broadcast television programme highlighting the lack of transparency in local authorities was shocking. It must be frustrating for the people of Ireland, whose only say in local authorities is voting for their local county councillor, because there is this other tier in the council, removed from the public representatives, that has been put there by people who were not chosen by the people, yet who are there to run the county for the people of the county. We need to look at that and see what we can do to improve it to give people faith in their local civil servants and make sure there is a bridge between people on the ground in their communities who know what is needed and wanted and the people making the decisions on how money should be spent and what the priorities are in the county.

I would be interested to hear if, even if there was no “RTÉ Investigates” report, this is something perhaps that the Minister was looking at anyway. I know there has been work and discussions on looking at local authorities and how they operate and their decision-making. It is not clear from local authority to local authority what the decision-making process is. Who gets to decide the county's priority? Is it this one golden egg that will make the council a load of money in one place, is it coming from the communities themselves, saying what they need and want, is it just based on Fáilte Ireland giving local authorities money for a certain project so that is what they will do, or is it the case where there is money for something so that is what they will do?

We have public participation network, PPNs, that I would love seeing more of because they bring in people from communities into the council. I do not know how valued they are in their respective local authorities. I cannot criticise any or all local authorities because there is no consistency. If there is no consistency, that should be based on the fact that they represent the people of that county. That is only reason there should be inconsistencies, otherwise there should be good community development workers in each county who reach out to communities, listen to what is needed by them, and then bring that back into the local authority, with that then becoming a priority for the local authority.

Some counties have a climate, biodiversity, heritage or sustainable transport officers, and some have none of those. Some have them but do not really value them. The inconsistency across the State is quite worrying in some ways because, at the end of the day, local authorities have much responsibility. They are the closest to the people who live in our societies and have opinions and desires.

We need to look at the fact there is no participation in how the budget is spent because it is decided behind closed doors.There is no democratic participation. Live streaming of council meetings is hit and miss - some do it and some will never do it. Why is that not par for the course? With live streaming, there is nothing to hide. We have to look at democratising local government a lot more.

Even with regard to the PPNs, with the best will in the world, they are not given much of a platform and many community groups are not engaged with them either. I would love to see community development workers going out to communities and holding public meetings. There is this fear of holding public meetings. We used to be great for public meetings long ago and it was the best thing. Yes, there was war and there were fights, but maybe it is okay to express ourselves. Sometimes all people want is to be listened to, and they can then accept that, for the community as a whole, this is a more important thing. However, we cannot be dictated to by where the funding is or what some random individual in one local authority has as a priority for themselves and their mission. We need to see consistency in representation.

It is hard for the councillors in some ways because they are picked by the people so it is all their fault if something is not happening. However, they are not the big decision-makers in the local authorities and we know that. It would be good to see us looking at how we can make people have more faith in local authority decision-making and at how the councillors themselves can be more involved. That would be more democratic and more inclusive and would mean communities are being listened to and are influencing the decisions made by local authorities.