The Guardian, 21 October 2013
An OECD report in 2008 on Ireland’s public services highlighted the fact that over the period of 1995 to 2007 (the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ years) public sector employment rose sharply, primarily in the areas of health (up 73%) and education (up 42%). Excluding health and education the increase in employment was 5% - low in comparison to a 45% rise in the overall labour force. The local government sector was one part of the public service which did not see massive increases in employment levels or in its budgets during these 13 years – yet, it has suffered the most during the economic downturn. Since 2008 local councils have seen staff reductions of 9,000 people (or 24%) and nearly one billion euro (17%) has been cut from the outgoings of local authorities.
The Government is now proposing to initiate even deeper cuts.
In the Putting People First policy document of October 2012 it was announced that further cost savings of €420 million will be sought. Local councils across the length and breadth of Ireland are at breaking point in trying to preserve a decent level of front-line services from a significantly decreased revenue stream. Veteran Dublin city councillor, Dermot Lacey, notes, ‘The cut backs have put a huge strain on the ability of the council to deliver services, particularly in the housing area. Social housing programmes have been abandoned and so we are seeing ever-lengthening housing lists’.
Despite the pressures imposed through harsh economic realities the local government sector has responded speedily to the state’s financial crisis. Significant efficiency gains have been made without commercial rates being increased. The primary innovations initiated by local councils to achieve greater efficiency have come through changed workplace practices, shared services, depot rationalisation and process reengineering facilitated through ICT and online service delivery. Shared services are seen as key to not only achieve efficiency gains but also to enhance the quality and range of services available to citizens and businesses.
Shared service projects are being developed through individual business cases in the areas of payroll, human resources, ICT/back office and accounts payable. Innovation through technology is also bearing fruit and, for example, South Dublin County Council recently launched SOURCE, an online service which both archives and provides access to digitised history and heritage materials. SOURCE is the world’s first linked double digital archiving project based on DSpace Open Source software. It is also the first multi-file type digital archive developed or implemented by an Irish public library service.
The headline act of Putting People First is the proposal by Government to reduce the number of local councils in Ireland from 114 to 31. This is to be achieved through the complete abolition of all town councils (Ireland will be reduced to a one-tier local government system) and mergers and amalgamations in Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary. Already, Ireland has the second most disconnected system of local government in Europe in terms of the number of councils to population and the population per councillor (second to the United Kingdom). It is difficult to reconcile removing 73% of the existing councils, creating even greater distance between the citizen and the council and calling it Putting People First. While Councillor Lacey supports aspects of the policy document, he believes that the key challenge ‘is to break forever the strangulating control of the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government in the Custom House’.
However, there is little prospect of this happening. A draft Council of Europe report from February 2013 entitled ‘Local Democracy in Ireland’ concluded, ‘The new policy paper (Putting People First), although it praises decentralisation in spirit, does not appear to provide many concrete steps in that direction. Some of the actual steps proposed go in the opposite direction’.
Regrettably, there is next-to-no debate in Ireland about local government but any discussions which are taking place are being swamped by a particular narrative which arrogantly states – BIG is better; BIG is cheaper; BIG means improved services; BIG is more efficient. These claims are being made in support of abolitions and mergers in spite of the fact that international evidence refutes the notion that a smaller number of larger local authorities yield improvements, savings and efficiencies. Instead the evidence from other jurisdictions that have been down this road points to the fact that structural reform and the redrawing of local authority boundaries is not a cost-free exercise and frequently result in dis-economies of scale.
Since 2008, austerity has been the only game in town in Ireland and in terms of local government we are witnessing a programme of rationalisation, cost-cutting and reductionism disguised as reform.
Aodh Quinlivan is a lecturer in politics at the Department of Government, University College Cork.
Yannick Cabrol is a former Economic Development officer at Waterford County Council.
No comments:
Post a Comment