I do not intend to say very much as regards this Bill which has received a general welcome but I have been encouraged to say a few words because of the contributions that have been made to the debate from different parts of the House. I feel myself that we are, as it were, groping our way in the matter of local government in the country and that at the present stage we are not really in the position when we can say that the amendments proposed to the Act will work satisfactorily or not, through a further experiment arising from experience in the administration of the previous Acts. In a general way, my view is that we want something more comprehensive in the matter of local government but perhaps the time has not arrived when we would be able to adopt a more comprehensive scheme.
County management has been subjected to very wide discussion over many years. I always personally took a line against county management because I felt it interfered too much with the rights of the elected representatives of the people. I always felt that while the county manager was necessary because of the difficulties that face our county administration, the county manager should be the supreme officer of the local authority rather than being a person who was to some extent independent of the local authority. That was a view I held for quite a number of years but my own practical experience in the last three or four years as a member of the Dublin Corporation and as a member of many of the subsidiary bodies of the Dublin Corporation, has given me to think perhaps more seriously on the realities of the situation.
I think it depends on how you look at things. If you have a capitalist system when you are a Socialist then obviously you must be opposed to county management but if you have a Socialist system and you are a Socialist, then I think you would welcome the county management system because in that way one can bring about more speedily a new system of society when you have county managers acting on the instructions of a central or superior authority. I feel, therefore, that in regard to this matter of the principle of county management, an awful lot really depends on the system of society a person wants to see adopted. Taking things as they are, I feel that our present unit of local government, the county, is not the most satisfactory unit and that there are historical associations and traditions—of not very long standing—but there are certainly some traditions in county organisation, the development of civilisation, the speed of communication, the complexity of matters that have to be dealt with now by local authorities, that would indicate some form of regional organisation. In a form of regional organisation I think it would be possible perhaps to have a more efficient system of local government and at perhaps something less in administrative costs.
There is a main problem in connection with local government that has caused me some concern for quite a long time. That is the relationship between the local authority and the Department of Local Government. When the system of county management was adopted, I have an idea that it was at the back of the minds of the people who conceived it that there would be much more freedom for local authorities than there was under the old system where the administration was in the hands of elected representatives only and in which case it was perhaps necessary that there should be a rather rigid control from the Department of Local Government. But where you brought in a management system and where you increased the control of the Department of Local Government you found in certain matters anyway that there tended to be a delaying of activities. That, of course, was particularly noticeable in regard to matters such as housing where every step from the very beginning to the end is subject to examination and confirmation by the Department of Local Government.
Where you are trying to carry out social services, such as the building of houses, it seems to me that some new form of organisation is necessary instead of having this continuous control step by step right up the whole way from the decision to acquire a plot of land to the placing of the contract. Where you have that continous control by the Department of Local Government, you slow up the carrying out of social services such as the building of houses.
I concede that it was not the function and was never the original function of the Department of Local Government to build the enormous number of houses that is being built— not only in this country, but in other countries—under the supervision of a Department such as the Department of Local Government. From the point of view of rapid progress where housing is concerned, it does appear to me that it might be better if the complete control of house building was under the charge of the Department of Local Government rather than under the local authority. There would, of course, be objections to that and there would be a lot of trouble—I am quite sure—about it, but if local authorities looked at it—particularly big local authorities like Dublin Corporation— from the point of view that their desire was to have the building done in the quickest possible time, the best machinery would be the machinery of the Department whose function and responsibility it would be to provide a particular number of houses each year for Dublin Corporation.
This Bill before us does suffer from a defect that has been mentioned by Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy Briscoe, in that it applies mainly to the counties rather than to the cities and only one section of it is brought in for the purpose of dealing with the question of pensions and retiring age of the city managers of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. Dublin Deputies would be anxious that the opportunity should be availed of now in this Bill to straighten out matters in connection with local government in the City and County of Dublin that need to be dealt with as matters of urgency.
I welcome the idea that is in the Bill of having one manager as the official or as the manager of one local authority. I have said already that I believe in a regional form of organisation where counties would be grouped together under one council and with one manager for the grouped area, but where that system is not in operation —as it is not in operation at the moment—it is best that a manager should act for one body rather than for two separate bodies, because when he acts for two separate bodies that may be in conflict he must be guided to a large extent in each county by the advice of the council of that particular county.
As things stand at the moment it does not help to have a manager acting as manager for more than one county. When we were discussing in this House the Bill introduced by the previous Minister for Local Government I suggested then, and strongly advocated, that the system we had here whereby the city manager was also county manager was unsatisfactory and that it did not lead to any co-ordination of effort. In fact, it led to confusion and I instanced at the time particular situations where a county manager as city manager wrote to himself as county manager putting forward a particular proposal and as county manager wrote back to himself as city manager saying that he did not agree with the proposal. There can be no co-ordination of effort under that system, but at the time I was taken to task very severely in a leader of a prominent daily newspaper for advocating that there should be two separate and distinct managers, one for County Dublin and one for the City of Dublin. It was suggested that while we had the one manager acting for both bodies there could be co-ordination, co-operation and unity of effort between the two bodies but practical experience proved that while the law remains as it is and the responsibilities remain as they are, there is no co-ordination of effort. I certainly would like to see one manager for the City of Dublin unless the Minister were prepared to combine Dublin City and County in one administrative unit, in which case one must have an individual manager for that particular unit, but he would be acting for and with a council for the whole area rather than for two separate councils who perhaps did not see eye to eye on many matters.
I hope the Bill is but a step forward in giving to certain local authorities powers that they have not had and for which they have been asking in regard to particular functions.
One of the problems which must face the Minister and those concerned with local government is whether the existing organisation is a good one, whether this organisation of county council, committee of agriculture, vocational education committee, mental hospital boards and other boards in the various counties is an efficient or effective system of local government. I am inclined to the view that it is not. More and more we are coming to the position where the same individuals are members of the various boards. Whether that is a good thing for local government or not is a matter that must be considered in the near future. Local representatives are tending to become permanent members of the local government machine. Is that a good thing or is it not? That is one of the problems that must be considered. Obviously, after a while, members of local authorities who attend meetings and take an interest in the business must become proficient in all the rules, regulations and laws of local government. The desire seems to be that there should be more local control rather than control by members who are elected from time to time and who, because of the peculiar system, are selected to represent their body on a different organisation. I am only mentioning a very difficult problem that will have to be considered by the Minister and by everybody interested in local government in the very near future.
The parish has been suggested as a unit. There is something to be said for that. The parish is a very old traditional unit and there may be some aspects of local government that could properly be initiated in the parish and there may be certain matters that could be dealt with on some form of organisation built up from that so long as it was a purely voluntary organisation in which a person was selected by his neighbours to represent them on his own local council and perhaps on some higher council. If we had, in addition to that or perhaps arising from that, the regional form of organisation where counties would be grouped in the most suitable groupings, we might have a more efficient organisation for local government.
There are matters that are dealt with by local authorities here, there and elsewhere—the same matters, the same problems—and I wonder whether it would not be better to have these matters dealt with by some central organisation that would represent the whole country.
I only mention these matters because they were brought to my mind by some of the contributions to the debate this evening. While they are not strictly relevant to the Bill, which in its scope is rather limited but which could be made more comprehensive by amendment, it is perhaps as well to avail of the opportunity to mention them.
I want to support a point that was made by Deputy Norton and Deputy Briscoe this evening in regard to Section 10. Obviously, Section 10 has been introduced to resolve doubts and in fact it is clearly set out in the section that its purpose is the avoidance of doubt. I understand that the four managers referred to have, by virtue of the Acts under which they were appointed, tenure of office for life. I do not know why "life" was put in those Acts. There was a subsequent effort made to alter that. Apparently the Department is in some doubt as to whether that subsequent effort succeeded in altering the position or not. If the previous Act did not solve the problem, I think the present section will fall short also because, if a person has received certain rights by statute, those rights exist and it would be very difficult and certainly unjust to deprive the particular individual of those rights in an amending Act.
I agree with what Deputy Norton has said that it may be desirable and in the interests of local government that managers may retire when they reach the age of 65. I do not want to commit myself entirely to the view that I approve of the suggestion because there are many examples in the world of individuals who are much older than 65 and who carry much heavier responsibilities than a county or city manager carries.
However, I mentioned that aspect before on many occasions in the House, and there may be, as I have said, agreement that in the general interests of the service, in order to bring about a gradual development of ability from the bottom to the top, it may be desirable to retire county managers at the age of 65. In the case of those particular men who were granted something else by another statute, I think that what we will have to do is to encourage, by being generous in this Bill, particular individuals to avail of generous pension provisions. I do not think we will have any difficulty whatever in putting in an amendment to that section that will enable those men, if they are wise, to retire and enjoy life on the very generous pension to which undoubtedly they are entitled.
I think that is all I want to say in regard to the Bill. It raises many difficult problems and, like everything else, human nature enters into these problems. In the City of Dublin we, the elected representatives of the people, work in the greatest harmony and co-operation with our city manager and our assistant city managers. We find in Dublin that our city manager —I think the same thing applies to his predecessor although I was not then a member of the council—whatever his statutory rights were, has never endeavoured to exercise them against the wish of the elected representatives. On every matter which is a managerial matter that we think we should deal with, the manager has always been willing to allow us to discuss it, to come to a decision on it and to act in accordance with that decision. Clearly, that is a very sensible approach for the manager to take.
I was glad to hear from the debate that many of our county managers adopt the same line. As one who was opposed to this system of management for a long period, I felt that my most dangerous opponents were the managers who were co-operating with the local authorities because they were helping to nail down this new system and to keep it there; but the persons who are in danger in this whole county management conception and idea are the very foolish county managers who have not the common sense to co-operate with their elected representatives. It seems to me that you have a human problem in selecting 30 or so county managers and county assistant managers. One will, of course, get managers who are unsatisfactory, and where one gets a county manager who is unsatisfactory and is always pulling against his local council, who is always in conflict with them, who gets up every morning determined to have so many rows that day, I think that there ought to be some provision in this Bill whereby on the request of the majority of the members of a council, if submitted to the Minister on specific complaints and if those complaints are established to the Minister's satisfaction, there would be power to remove that county manager from that particular county. There may be opportunities of placing him elsewhere where his peculiar abilities may be utilised in the national interest; but, whatever system you have, one is bound to have individuals who cannot and will not co-operate with other people. I think that perhaps a section such as that in the Bill would have a very useful effect. I certainly would not like it to have the effect that it would intimidate a man, or prevent him from carrying out what he conceived to be his conscientious duty.
