Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome my colleague from Dublin City Council, Councillor Dermot Lacey. It is the best part of 30 years that Councillor Lacey has given to local government, so we are humbled by his presence here today. I thank him for joining us for this very important discussion.

I thank the Independent Senators for putting this matter on the agenda and I thank the Minister of State for attending. Senator Craughwell is right that his colleagues on this side of the House are very exercised. We continuously exercise our powers when it comes to matters relating to local government. I am very proud to have been elected and re-elected to Dublin City Council. I do not think there is any greater privilege than to be elected by your local community to represent your local community and to champion your local community, to speak on their behalf and to have an opportunity on their behalf to have an input into decisions that are made that relate to their community and their daily lives.

It is a fact that our local government is in need of strengthening. It is a fact that it is in need of reform. It is a fact that we would all benefit if our local government was strengthened and if local authority members were empowered. I believe they are the public representatives who are closest to the people and closest and best positioned to strengthen our democracy.

We need to recognise that we live in a world - our world, a democratic world - that is under attack from autocratic powers. That is a real threat that is affecting all of our lives today. If we do not accept and recognise that fact and take action to address it, and face it down and tackle it, we will reap what we sow. If we want to be serious about it, we need to strengthen local democracy, and strengthening local democracy means empowering our local authority members - those who have a mandate from their local communities.

I am one of those local authority members. I do not have all the answers. I am not an expert in planning, financial management or an awful lot of things. What I am an expert in is listening to my community and hearing my community, and I have developed skills to advocate on their behalf. That is an incredibly powerful tool in our democracy but it is one that our current local government structures do not sufficiently value. That is just a fact. They do not value it sufficiently in terms of how we structure the individual local authority member’s role, resource it and value it.

Senator Craughwell talked about security. I have come from a meeting of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, which talks about the attacks on democracy and the attacks on politicians. It also talks about the attacks on journalists, the attacks on NGOs and the attacks on gardaí. We live in a violent world. However, local electoral representatives work out of their homes; they work on the go. Dublin city councillors do not have an office to work out of. In the largest local authority in the country, the elected members do not have an office where they can securely invite a constituent in to meet them. Those are unacceptable working conditions for anybody. Good luck to those in the executive functions but they are operating in a completely different space to the elected members of Dublin City Council. It is not like they are operating in luxury but they do have some basic conditions like an office, security on the door and resources. Elected members of Dublin City Council are expected to put together a city development plan. Historically, those plans have covered periods of five years. We are talking about six, eight or ten years. It is a wonderful privilege to have an opportunity to have a say, but they are not given any resources to do it. They have no allowance to get expert advice and consultation or to do research. We are not setting them up to succeed. We are setting them up to take a beating. The imbalance between the powers of the elected representatives and the executive functions is wrong and it has to be corrected. I appeal to the Minister of State to correct them.

I appeal to him also to recognise the responsibility that the local authority members are taking on. Any time there is a crisis, like a flood or a fire in a community, or a pandemic, it is the local authority that responds. It is the elected members who advocate and try to direct the local authority on how best to respond. Those local authority members need to be supported to do that.

We will talk about the joint policing committees in terms of the policing Bill that is coming through the House. I want the Minister of State to know that for our elected members to be able to represent their communities, to ensure that the communities they are representing are provided with adequate policing and adequate safety, they need a forum at which they can hold those who are charged with delivering that safety to account. That is what the joint policing committees do. Four times a year, once a quarter, local authority members can meet with a Garda chief superintendent and the senior executive management from the local authority, and they can hold them to account for delivering safety for their communities.That is why it is critical, if we are moving to a community safety partnership model, that all local authority members be empowered to be members of the partnership along with their Oireachtas colleagues, that a local authority member be the chair of the forum, and that the forum meet four times per year in public with the chief superintendent and the senior executive manager of the local authority.

I am over time and appreciate the Acting Chairman’s indulgence. My colleagues will speak on this issue also. I thank the Minister of State for his time today.