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mayoral elections would take place in 2004 but the Government repealed the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.
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