When the House rose last evening a number of Deputies from this side of the House had been endeavouring to get across the message to the Minister about the danger involved in enabling a clerical officer to be a member of a local authority. I listened to the Minister say that this was an exercise in local democracy, it was an arrangement whereby people should be given the opportunity of electing a clerical officer if they so wished.
It would appear extremely attractive to the man in the street to support the candidature of a clerical officer. There is no doubt that the elector would see, or could visualise, tremendous advantage, on a personal basis, by having a clerical officer in, say, the health or housing section as his representative at county council level. I am speaking about a clerical officer, a man or a woman in that category, irrespective of the party he or she would represent. I am not without experience of membership of local authorities but my experience has been that in the normal course, as a Deputy of this House and as a Minister, I have had occasion to call on or telephone the offices of a county council when, in fact, more than 50 per cent of the time I was conducting my business through a clerical officer. There is no doubt, irrespective of what the Minister may say in relation to the fact that the decision making at County Council level is done by the Manager—my experience of Urban Councils or Town Commissions is not anything as extensive as that at County Council level—the more senior officers take the decisions. Very often, and in fact in most cases, those decisions are taken arising from the background information prepared and supplied by a clerical officer. It is because of that that we, as a group here —the Opposition—are positively opposed to the enabling of a clerical officer becoming a member of a local authority.
I and my Party feel extremely strongly on this. We want to see the field for selection of membership to local authorities widened to the greatest possible extent. But, nonetheless—and I think Deputy Brennan indicated other aspects of this here last evening—in cases where one has a situation that the clerical officer, at a Council meeting, as a member of the County Council, makes his case to the chairman of that County Council, he is inhibited in another way; there is a restriction in this regard: he cannot be as openly critical of the County Manager, the County Engineer or the various senior operatives and officers of the County Council as can the ordinary councillor. Therefore, it militates against him in that regard. But he does not need to be critical; he has his inside way of trying to get the job done without making the case, as would other councillors, at local authority level. As well as that, it can create a friction between councillors of the one party.
We all have experience enough of local government to know that that is an every day risk one takes. I am standing for the local elections and there is no doubt if I become a councillor and if a colleague on the Fianna Fáil panel, who is a clerical officer and a housing officer in the County Council, also gets elected I feel I am at a disadvantage. I write a letter to the County Council. That person is dealing with the correspondence and I know in the scramble for votes from the electors within my area if that person has some good information it will be rushed out to his or her supporters. I have a lot of experience of this. It is very hard to keep up with a colleague of mine, Deputy Flanagan, and trying to get out good news is not very easy.