Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Councillor Dermot Lacey who I have always admired. I thank my County Meath colleague Senator Keogan and all of our colleagues for tabling this motion and having this important debate this evening. I have always been a great advocate for local government in this Chamber and elsewhere. It is a topic I am passionate about. I spent 17 years as a councillor. I was first elected when I was 21. I was Fianna Fáil's spokesperson on local government in the last Dáil. Currently I am the rapporteur of the Seanad Public Consultation Committee on the future of local government. The opening session of the committee, which was attended by the Acting Chairperson, Senator Boyhan, and many others, was hugely insightful. In the morning session we heard from representatives of the AILG, LAMA and the Northern Ireland Local Government Association, NILGA. One of the most stark statements made on the day was from Ms Alison Allen, who is the CEO of NILGA:

It has been a shock, as we have developed our relationships, to understand the limits on the political mandate for those in Ireland because local government and local democracy are one and the same in Northern Ireland and across the UK. All power is vested in the councillors. They are the council. All authority is devolved to the chief executives through a scheme of delegation ... The politicians are the decision-makers. It has been a real shock to learn of the situation here.

It was damning to hear the CEO of the NILGA come into this Chamber and give such an assessment of our democracy. The issue here is not whether councils in Ireland are doing a good job. I think they are doing a very good job. I am proud of the work of our councils, including Meath County Council, and their staff. I do not want to get on the bandwagon of kicking what are termed "unelected officials". I do not subscribe to that because they work damn hard on behalf of our citizens and they do a fine job. However, the issue is whether the job of the politician is simply one of representation or actually involves implementing local democracy. That issue kept coming up during our debates. Are we simply becoming a vehicle for going cap in hand to an official and saying "Please Sir"? The problem with that is that the public will lose faith in the system and think that their representatives cannot effect change. That is leading to an ever-increasing decline in the turnout at local elections. In the 25 years since I was first elected, I have seen an ever-increasing decline in voter turnout. I will mention a statistic that was cited during the debate that day: the highest turnout was in County Leitrim, at a little over 60%, but in parts of Dublin it was only 20%. That is damning.

One of the key topics raised by local public representatives at the committee was the elimination of town councils. The decision to take away local government at urban level was one of the most grotesque, barbarous acts of democracy ever. That point was echoed by Fine Gael councillors as well, in fairness to them. It was simply an atrocious act by the then Minister, Phil Hogan. The participation of the Labour Party was even more grotesque because that party is centred in urban Ireland. It backfired spectacularly because it took away a whole swarm of their councillors. There were 80 town councils in this country, with 700 representatives who had connections to their communities. They had dedicated budgets. In Navan we had a budget of more than €12 million for our own town. We had our own planning authority, separate from the county council. The average number of people per council in Ireland used to be 2,815. That figure, from 2015, was the highest in Europe, and the UK was second. After Phil Hogan's barbarous act, we went to 4,838 people per council, or nearly 5,000. France has one councillor for every 118 people. There are 36,500 councillors in France. What Phil Hogan did was shameful, and the Labour Party's support made it worse. I introduced a town council Bill in the last Dáil. We got it all the way to Committee Stage. In the last Dáil, Brendan Howlin had the neck, along with Willie Penrose, to come in and try to introduce a similar Bill. Good Jesus, I could not get over it. The pair of them had some neck to stand there, having got rid of town councils in the first place.

The proposal to provide for directly elected mayors is only window dressing because it does not involve proper executive power like that held by every other mayor across Europe. When we saw Sadiq Khan at the Covid-19 inquiries over the past couple of weeks, we realised that he has real powers in an emergency for the citizens of London. When those citizens look at their mayor, they see a clearly identifiable person who they can hold accountable. They know he has the power to protect them, to improve their lives and to be held accountable when he does wrong.

On a positive note, our councils are now doing work in significant spheres, such as enterprise, tourism, community and sport, in which they were not involved 25 years ago when I became a member of a local authority. They have diversified away from the simple focus on roads, water and planning. They are doing substantial work in other areas. Our councils are a credit to our local democracy; never let it be said that they are not. However, the question for us is whether we place the role of the public representative at the heart of local government.