In the second place, where it was possible for a member to be elected to the Corporation by a quota of 306 and, in the case of ten by a quota of 208, it means that persons who are really representative, who would have the wholehearted support of a very large section of the city, as worthy of vesting responsibility in them for the management of city affairs, would find themselves in the Council on a level with a person who could only obtain the support of 200 or less votes in his own ward. So that as well as the numbers being too great the real representative persons in the city, whatever class or section they represented, would find themselves on a level with people who, it must be clear, could not be regarded as so representative, and their work must of necessity be impaired by such a position.
In the third place elections by wards must have blurred in members of the Corporation the city interests as a whole. If they were of the type that took an interest in their own elections to the Council, rather than in the affairs of the city as a whole, there must have been a tendency to look after ward interests as against city interests as such. The Corporation, as a whole, going out as one body every three years, created a gap in policy such as it seems advisable to avoid. It has also to be taken into consideration that the old Council of 56 did a very considerable portion of its work through committees. There were fifteen committees actually working in the Corporation and the work of these committees had to come before the council for ratification before their work actually came into effect.
Then, on the machinery side, under the old system it is a fact that under our local Government organisation, as a whole, there is not a chief executive officer working under local authorities to control and guide the whole of the official staff in the councils. In Cork there is a city engineer working more or less direct into the Council. You had a superintendent medical officer of health, an executive sanitary officer, you had an accountant who, to a greater extent, worked into the Town Clerk. While the Town Clerk had an over-riding authority in a vague kind of way he had no clear statutory responsibility for the control of the staff and neither have the County Council Secretaries or any Town Clerks of boroughs. There is, in fact, no such general control of the staff. So that you had, in view of the work it had to do through its committees, a loose council system. The different committees drew on their own sections of the staff, and, to a certain extent, the way in which the staff worked into the Council dissipated the staff in its organisation and the effectiveness of its work.
It is proposed to replace a council of that type by a council of fifteen elected from the city as a whole, five being elected every year, so that in the first election, which it is hoped will take place towards the end of the year, five members will be elected. Annually after that, in June, five members will be elected, each five going out three years after they have been elected. So you will have a small Council elected by the city as a whole. At present there are 27,236 local government electors in Cork. At an election in which 75 per cent. would poll, the quota for the election of five persons would be 3,441. That is, something approaching 3,000 votes at least would be required to put a representative on to the Cork Corporation, as against something like 300 under the system which it is proposed to supersede. Then there is the yearly election, so that the Council would be a council of a size that would be thoroughly representative and would be thoroughly responsible because of the number of votes a person must get in order to be elected.
It will be a size suitable for quick and nevertheless thorough deliberation. It will represent the city as a whole without any drawing aside of any part or section of the Council to ward interests or the interests that represent a part of the city alone. With a yearly election you will have none of the desire to develop policies of one particular kind simply because the triennial election is coming along. You will have a continuity of effort and a continuity of thought in the working out of the city's policy. As well as that, the Bill proposes that a Manager will be appointed, and it proposes that such functions as are not directly reserved to the Council by this Bill, to which we will refer later, that these will be exercised by the Manager, who as well shall have control and direction of the staff. He shall be the chief executive officer functioning for the Council and for himself, and, in so far as he carries out some of the functions of the Corporation, he shall be the chief executive person controlling and directing the whole machinery of the staff that will be serving the Council. Now it is proposed that certain of the functions of the Corporation will be reserved for direct exercise by the Council. These functions are:
(a) the making of any rate or the borrowing of any moneys;
(b) the making, amending, or revoking of any by-law;
(c) the making of any order and the passing of any resolution by virtue of which any enactment is brought into operation in or made to apply to the Borough, and the revoking of any such order and the rescinding of any such resolution,
(d) the application to be made to any authority in respect of the making or revoking of any such order as aforesaid;
(e) the promotion or the opposing in the Oireachtas of any legislation affecting the Borough or any part of the Borough;
(f) the appointment or election of any person to be a member of any public body;
(g) Parliamentary and local elections;
(h) subject to the provisions of this Act, the appointment, suspension, and removal of the Manager and the granting of an allowance or gratuity to the Manager on his ceasing to be the Manager, and
(i) the determination of the amount of the salary and remuneration of the Lord Mayor.
The Bill contains also a provision for such additional powers as two-thirds of the Corporation will recommend and decide at a meeting of which one month's notice will be given; such additional powers as they shall recommend should be reserved to the Council may be so reserved by the Minister with or without a local inquiry into the matter. In the same way, subject to two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, such an order may be revoked or reserved powers may be transferred from the Council to the Manager.
It may be presumed by some that certain powers are taken away from the Council which it is proper that they should have. Very careful consideration has been given to the matter, and we are of opinion that these powers that have been quoted there cover anything that the Council may usefully require to have reserved to themselves for direct action. If there are any other powers that should properly be regarded, or that experience might show might be better reserved for direct action by the Council we trust that experience in the actual working of the business of the Corporation under this arrangement will show what these are.
The general effect, however, of reserving to the Corporation only certain powers is that it will give the Corporation time and opportunity to pay the fullest possible attention to the real big questions of policy and control in the city, so that the real big problem of the city will be thoroughly, carefully and fully investigated. On the other hand, the provision of a City Manager with full powers of control over the staff, and the direction of the staff, will, we are satisfied, ensure to the Council that when it has reached decisions that it wants to carry out, it will have an effective and harmoniously organised machinery to carry out that work. The effect on the general efficiency of the staff by having a Manager there who will be in complete control, and who will be in a position to take complete responsibility to the Council for it, must be beneficial. Hitherto, simply because of the loose organisation of the staff, and the various ways in which the different sections of the staff came in connection with different members or committees of the Council, merit did not always get the direct recognition that merit should get. Circumstances of one kind or another tended to place the people who came in particular contact with committees and certain sections of the Council in a position for preferment that, under an ordinary sound and just organisation, they would not and should not come into. In the same way when there were defects in the staff it often came about that public notice was drawn to these defects in the first instance without these defects coming under the review or check of any responsible officer. And many an official was dragged into publicity and blamed in a way that was neither just nor desirable.
If there are complaints to be found with the staff or with any part of the machinery of the Cork Corporation in future, the members of the staff will be assured that before there is any public criticism of them, either by the Council or elsewhere, these complaints will be thoroughly investigated by the Manager and any defects which might show themselves up in public can be remedied by the Manager before the trouble of publicity is incurred at all.
The Bill arranges that where the Manager acts directly for the Corporation, where, under the old system the Council would act by resolution, the Manager shall act by Sealed Order. It makes it one of the principal statutory duties of the Manager that he shall prepare the annual estimates, and it makes provision for a systematic consideration of these estimates by the Council at the proper time. It makes provision that where the Council is of opinion that the estimates should be changed, and where in the opinion of the Manager such change would be prejudicial to the general interests of the City's work, the Council shall not take a decision on the matter but shall postpone the decision for fourteen days so as to allow a period of further consideration both by the Manager and the Council. If after the expiration of fourteen days the Council still consider that the changes in the estimates that they propose should be made, the Council can make them.
I spoke of the number of committees that were set up under the old Council. It would be possible I expect to do away with most of these committees. At any rate such committees as the new Council wants to set up it has powers under the recent Local Government Act to set up. But the work formerly discharged by these committees may be much more effectively discharged by the Manager, who may be regarded for the purpose of certain classes of work as a constantly sitting committee who can be in constant touch with his officials. He can have his material gathered to him for the purpose of decision without any restrictions with regard to notices of motions and such things. Much of the work that would be done by the committees in the old days will be done much more promptly and much more effectively by the Manager under the present Bill. In the very complicated working of City life to-day it is quite clear that prompt and frequent decision requires to be taken for very many matters that cannot possibly wait for the deliberation of a committee and subsequent ratification by the Council. There are other committees to which the old Borough Council nominated certain members of the Council. The present Bill makes provision for the exception of one particular committee, that is a committee appointed under the County scheme prepared under the provision of the Local Government Temporary Provisions Act of 1923.
The Council can appoint on such public bodies as it is due to appoint, or as in the old days it would be due to appoint, members of the Council, but under the provision of this Bill they can appoint persons who will not necessarily be members of the Council. They will be persons who because of their particular qualification and particular experience can be expected to give the best possible type of service.