Tuesday, April 15, 2014

LOCAL REPRESENTATION DECIMATED: AN ANALYSIS OF COUNTY CORK


It is clear that the abolition of town councils means nothing in Dublin where there are four big ‘top tier’ local authorities. The obsession there is with the issue of a directly elected mayor. Meanwhile, across Ireland, more fundamental representation is at stake. For example, let us look at the county of Cork – the biggest county in Ireland.
Excluding entirely the city area (where the number of councillors remains the same at 31) we can see that local government representation falls from 156 to 55 – a massive drop by any standards.

 
At the 2009 local elections, 48 members were elected to Cork County Council through the following Local Electoral Areas (LEAs):

·         Bandon LEA - 3 seats

·         Blarney LEA - 4 seats

·         Carrigaline LEA - 6 seats

·         Macroom LEA - 4 seats

·         Midleton LEA - 6 seats

·         Bantry LEA - 5 seats

·         Skibbereen LEA - 7 seats

·         Fermoy LEA - 4 seats

·         Kanturk LEA - 4 seats

·         Mallow LEA - 5 seats

 
In addition to Cork County Council, there were 12 town councils – Bandon, Bantry, Clonakilty, Cobh, Fermoy, Kinsale, Macroom, Mallow, Midleton, Passage West, Skibbereen, and Youghal – with 9 elected members on each, for a total of 108 town councillors.
 
We will see a massive change in 2014, especially in West Cork.
 
With the amputation of the town councils, we will be left with a 55-member Cork County Council, drawn from 8 LEAs.

 
·         Blarney-Macroom: 6 seats

·         Kanturk-Mallow: 6 seats

·         Fermoy: 6 seats

·         East Cork: 6 seats

·         Cobh: 7 seats

·         Ballincollig-Carrigaline: 10 seats

·         Bandon-Kinsale: 6 seats

·         West Cork: 8 seats

In 2009, West Cork had 12 county councillors drawn from the Bantry and Skibbereen LEAs as well as 27 town councillors from Bantry, Clonakilty and Skibbereen. As a result of local government ‘reform’ West Cork will be left with 8 councillors covering an enormous jurisdiction. Is this progress?
 
Back in 1924, the Phil Hogan of the day sought to abolish Rural District Councils in the name of efficiency and cost savings. What was really meant of course was centralisation. The Free State government had already demonstrated its centralist tendencies by passing in 1923 a remarkable piece of legislation which gave the Minister the power to dissolve local authorities if he deemed them to be underperforming.
 
During the Dail debate in 1924 on the abolition of Rural District Councils, John Daly TD, an Independent from Cork, asked, ‘What would a man from Bantry Bay know about affairs in Araglen?’
 
The world is a smaller place today and we have a continuous 24/7 news cycle as well as the internet and Twitter so it is easy to poke fun at John Daly but he knew what he was talking about. He finished his contribution to the debate by saying – ‘Local representatives know their area best of all and should be given the power to tackle local problems appropriately.’
 
In my humble opinion, this sentence should be pinned to the wall in every office of the Custom House.

THE DEATH OF CARRICKMACROSS TOWN COUNCIL


Speech delivered at special dinner to mark the abolition of Carrickmacross Town Council

Carrickmacross, Saturday 12 April 2014

Ladies and gentleman, it is a genuine pleasure for me to be with you tonight although in some ways it is a sad occasion. When I receive an invitation to speak at a conference or a seminar, I usually take my time, weigh up the pros and cons and, ultimately, accept some of the invitations and reject others. As my wife will confirm, I had no hesitation in accepting this invitation. There are two reasons for this. First, I was intrigued at the prospect of speaking at what is effectively a funeral or a wake for a public institution.

 
Secondly, I accepted because of the issue concerned – I am, and always have been, a firm believer in local self-government, local democracy and the principle of subsidiarity. Accordingly I am appalled at the decision to abolish town councils. As a country I believe we will be all the poorer. Essentially what we are witnessing is a disgusting power grab by central government – it is about power, it is about control and it is about greed.

When I am not reading about local government, my nose is usually stuck in a book of crime fiction. There is a Dutch crime writer called de Wetering who has written the following words – ‘Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.’ I think central government and the Custom House will not be satisfied until local government is completely obliterated.

Greed is also a kind of fear – fear of losing control.

Since the founding legislation of 1898 we have moved from over 600 local authorities to 114 and now down to 31. Colm McCarthy recommended a number of 22 local authorities in the Bord Snip Report. Where is it going to end? How is it the case that local government lacks protection in Bunreacht na hÉireann? The Seanad, a marginally relevant institution, could not be abolished without reference to the people. Yet, a whole tier of local democracy and 83 directly elected councils, can be removed through legislation without reference to the people.

The Council of Europe report from 2013, entitled ‘Local Democracy in Ireland’ slammed Ireland for its lack of constitutional protection for sub-national government and correctly claimed that it was indicative of a fundamental lack of respect for local government. This lack of respect has existed and thrived since the foundation of the state with government after government prioritising intense centralisation over local democracy.

Where is the evidence that big is better? I can accept arguments about efficiencies and economies of scale if they are soundly based on evidence but not if they are built on nothing. The international evidence refutes the notion that a smaller number of larger local authorities yields improvements, savings and efficiencies. Instead the evidence from other jurisdictions that have been down this road clearly points to the fact that structural reform and the redrawing of local authority boundaries is not a cost-free exercise and frequently results in dis-economies of scale, especially with one-off costs arising from amalgamations.

We cannot and should not be fooled by the concept of municipal districts. Firstly, these are not political institutions or organs of democracy if there are no specific elections to them. Secondly, with no link between revenue raising and expenditure then municipal districts will not be legitimate as local government entities. In other words, if Minister Hogan’s grand plan is to create municipal districts with no rating function - but they will be part of a county council which has a rating function - then let us call the municipal districts what they are – glorified county council area committees.

In truth, town councils have been on a life support system for some time and it has been a long-term strategic aim of the Custom House to get rid of them. Back in the year 2000 I spoke at an AMAI seminar in Inchydoney following the publication of a local government bill that removed water and sanitary functions from town councils. I predicted then that town councils would be abolished inside 10 years. I was a bit out on my time-frame but the trend was an obvious one. I also argued in Inchydoney that water services would be nationalised before eventually being privatised.

Let us recall the fine words of Fine Gael’s New Politics document in 2010 - ‘We are committed to building strong local government. The over-centralisation of government in Ireland is, in our view, inefficient and fundamentally incompatible with a healthy Republic’. Well, if it was incompatible with a healthy Republic in 2010 it sure as hell is incompatible in 2014. Are there many centralisation success stories in Ireland? Has Irish Water had a good start? What about the student grant scheme operated through SUSI? I wish someone would explain to the students in my university who had to withdraw from education last year due to non-payment of their grant that centralisation works? Has the driving license process improved with centralisation?

Why are we not debating these issues? Why have town councils died without a discussion? The national media is complicit in this and their refusal to address local government issues is shameful. Of course, the national media is Dublin-based and they do not care one iota about town councils. There is only one town council in Dublin, in Balbriggan. This was a former Town Commissioners and its abolition means nothing to Dubliners.  Predictably, the media has failed to engage with the issue and the only matter which is suddenly gaining some traction in the media is the directly elected mayor for the capital.

In my opinion towns matter and towns which have a local council are healthier and stronger than those without. I am acutely aware of the fact that I am in Patrick Kavanagh country and in one of his famous poems, ‘Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal’ Kavanagh refers to the mythology of towns.

Something which is a fact rather than a myth is that town councils have been the most efficient element within the local government system in terms of being self-financing and maintaining commercial rates at a lower level that their county council counterparts. Removing the rating power from towns will lead to an increase in commercial rates for the hard-pressed business people in the towns of Ireland.

Town or municipal councils should be at the heart of our local government system. The very nature of local government is that civic society is up close and personal. Local councils and the services they provide have a far more immediate, continuous and comprehensive impact on our daily lives than many issues which dominate nationally. Local councils and councillors have to deal with a range of issues and factors that are not of their making and for which they may have no formal responsibility.

These issues include migration, multi-culturalism, homelessness, social exclusion and other social problems such as drug addiction, prostitution, and petty crime. Many of the social problems faced by Irish communities today are most sharply evident in urban settings and towns. Sub-county authorities should be strengthened to address these problems. Instead they are being destroyed.

 
Again I turn to Patrick Kavanagh who wrote the following words in his poem, ‘Literary Adventure

 
It's as simple as that, it's a matter

Of walking with the little gods, the ignored

Who are so seldom asked to write the letter

Containing the word.

No need for Art anymore

When Authority whispers like Tyranny

 
We live in a dangerous time when the tyranny of central government means that not only can you be ignored but you can be removed from history without debate.

 I thank you for the warm welcome you have afforded me tonight. I hope to return in happier times when some new, improved version of Carrickmacross Town Council will be created; a local authority which will drive the local economy and which will be a jewel in the crown of County Monaghan which – after all – is God’s own country. Thank you.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THE DETAILS ARE IMPORTANT


The Local Government Reform Act 2014 has received little media attention or public scrutiny in Ireland. However, the one issue to get pulses racing – at least in one part of the country – is the proposal to have a directly elected mayor for Dublin. This is not a new issue in Ireland. The Local Government Act, 2001 proposed that direct mayoral elections would take place in 2004 but the Government repealed the decision through legislation in 2003. A Green Paper in 2008 again recommended directly elected mayors but the initiative never saw the legislative light of day during the remaining life-time of that Government. Enter Phil Hogan, Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, who provided for a directly elected mayor for the Dublin metropolitan area in Part 11 of the 2014 Reform Act.
 
The legislation proposed the holding of a Dublin plebiscite on the issue on the same day as the 2014 local elections – Friday 23 May. Controversially however the Minister included a provision that each of the four local authorities which constitute the Dublin metropolitan area – Dublin City Council, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Fingal County Council, and South Dublin County Council – would firstly have to individually adopt a resolution in favour of holding the plebiscite.

The insertion of this veto power for any one of the four Dublin local authorities was a curious move by the Minister and always had the potential to open up the proverbial can of worms. And so it proved. Three of the four Dublin local authorities comfortably adopted resolutions in favour of the plebiscite but, critically, the other local authority did not. The process begun on Monday 24 March when Dublin City Council approved with 50 votes in favour and none against. One week later, Monday 31 March, the remaining three councils met to decide the fate of the mayoral plebiscite. The vote in South Dublin County Council was 19 in favour with 3 against; in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the elected members voted decisively in favour by 23 to zero.
 
The sting in the tail however was spectacularly delivered by the members of Fingal County Council who voted against the holding of the plebiscite by 16 votes to 6. Accordingly, as things stand, the proposal is dead in the water and will not be going before the people of Dublin on 23 May. Advocates of the directly elected mayor idea are appalled by the fact that the plebiscite has been blocked despite the overwhelming majority of councillors in Dublin voting in favour. The combined total vote was 98-19 and yet the minority of councillors against the proposal have successfully rejected it.

Minister Hogan is firmly in the spotlight. Surely the decision to have a directly elected mayor should have been put in the hands of the citizens of Dublin? Placing an extra unnecessary obstacle into the process suggests that the Minister’s commitment to the concept is half-hearted, at best. While I am in favour of a plebiscite by the citizens, I think it would be wrong to scapegoat the elected members of Fingal County Council. Councillor Gerry McGuire of the Labour Party was one of those who voted against; he argued that any directly elected mayor would be based in the city and would ignore rural Dublin, including the residents of Fingal. He added that the Local Government Reform Act 2014 did not provide enough detail about the role and powers of the mayor and so people would not know precisely what they were voting on. I think this latter point is valid and deserves some attention.

The 2014 act is light on details in terms of the precise role of the directly elected mayor for Dublin. There are many different models of directly elected mayors and the powers and influence of the Italian mayor are different from the English mayor and the Greek mayor. Nobody can honestly say that the UK experiment with directly elected mayors has been a success, in light of the fact that the majority of cities which held referendums voted against having mayors. The respected academic, Kevin Orr, has claimed that mayoral referendums and elections have not raised the visibility of local government, except in ‘faintly embarrassing ways’. Having elected H’Angus the Monkey as their mayor in 2002, the citizens of Hartlepool decided 10 years later to drop the directly elected mayor model. In America more and more cities, counties and towns are also shifting to the council-manager model.

Ultimately, as Councillor McGuire suggested, it does come down to vital details such as the power and responsibilities of the directly elected mayor and the relationship between the mayor and the local legislature, i.e. the council(s). Directly elected mayors with executive powers can make quicker decisions and cut through much of the traditional internal local government bureaucracy – the flip side is that there is a grave danger in placing too much power in the hands of one individual.
In 2006, I remember interviewing the Mayor of Schenectady (New York), Brian Stratton, who made a very persuasive case to me for directly elected mayors. He said that when he was elected mayor he inherited a fiscal train wreck but was able to turn things around because he had immense executive powers. What he failed to mention though was that the fiscal train wreck had been caused by the previous directly elected mayor who had bankrupted the city with a massive deficit and a rock-bottom credit rating.

Many directly elected mayors in America have veto power over the council and are all powerful. When I asked the mayor of Albany, Gerald Jennings, about his relationship with his council, he laughed and said, ‘I’m not obliged to go to council meetings, thank God.’
 
In terms of Ireland what we need first and foremost is a proper debate on the concept of directly elected mayors and we need to know the precise details of the model that is being proposed. At that point an informed decision can be made.
 
For now the proposal is scrapped and has been dragged down at the first hurdle by Fingal County Council. It will appear again however in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, we have an opportunity to work out the details so that we can all know what we are talking about.

Dr Aodh Quinlivan is a lecturer in politics at the Department of Government in University College Cork where he specialises in local government – a.quinlivan@ucc.ie; @AodhQuinlivan.