Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Jan 2000

Vol. 513 No. 2

Adjournment Debate. - Strategic Policy Committees.

Mr. Gilmore

I thank the Chair for allowing me to raise this matter. Local authorities are now in the process of establishing strategic policy committees which will include councillors and representatives of community, voluntary, disadvantaged, environmental and cultural organisations in a new committee structure. The SPCs will consider council policy on a range of areas – housing, planning, transportation, amenities and so on – and will advise the council on those policy areas. In addition, the chairpersons of the SPCs who will be councillors will, together with the chairperson of the council or the mayor, constitute a corporate policy group within each council which will function as a kind of council cabinet which, among other things, will have very signifi- cant powers including the preparation of the council's draft estimates.

The thinking behind these new structures was based on the idea of partnership and inclusiveness, partnership between the council and the wider community and inclusiveness of all the political interests on the council. The Minister, to underwrite that, issued guidelines on how the council should be elected and specifically on how the chairs of these SPCs should be elected. The guidelines state:

SPC councillor membership should reflect the proportionality and distribution of elected representation on the full council. The allocation of SPC chairs should also reflect equitably the spread of elected representation on the council. The points made above as to good will and fair play are equally relevant here. However, where agreement in this regard is not possible the group of SPC chairs to be appointed should technically be treated for appointment purposes as if it constituted a separate committee to ensure an equal spread of representation as SPC chairs.

What does the Minister intend to do in a case where a council decides to throw out the window and elect SPC chairs based on crude majoritarianism? A meeting of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council on 13 December last decided to elect the chairs of the SPCs. Arising from the Minister's guidelines the Labour Party proposed that the election of the SPC chairs should be carried out under the group voting system. That proposal was defeated on a vote of 19 to six. There then followed a succession of five votes for each of the five SPC chair positions which also resulted in a vote of 19 to six, in each case the losing candidate being the Labour nominee and on the opposite side a combination of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Progressive Democrats. This kind of political grab-all would do justice to the old Stormont regime. The effect on this council is that the Labour and single Green Party representative constitute 25% of the entire membership of the council and have been excluded from participation both on the SPC chairs and on the corporate policy group.

I do not want the Minister to deal particularly with the position in an individual council but the advice the council was given was that, so far, the chairs of the SPCs have not been designated under section 27 of the Local Government Act, 1985 for the purposes of group voting. While the guidelines which the Minister issued states there should be group voting the legal position is that that cannot be given effect because it has not been designated so far.

Will the Minister assure the House that he will make an order to designate the chairs and, indeed, the formation of SPCs for the purposes of the group voting system that was provided for under section 27 of the Local Government Act, 1985? Otherwise I fear that in other councils there will be a repeat of the greedy grab-all that took place in this council.

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment and Local Government (Mr. D. Wallace)

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. My colleague, the Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, is unable to be in the House to respond and has asked me to do so on his behalf.

The introduction of local authority strategic policy committees is a new and exciting way of strengthening the councillor's role and that of the local community in developing council policy. Central to the success of the SPCs is a partnership approach between councillors, local sectoral interests and local authority management.

The Minister has been engaged in an intensive consultative process with relevant interests on the programme of local government renewal. As part of these consultations, the Minister established a working group, representative of local government, the social partners, the Institute of Public Administration and his Department, to draw up revised guidelines for the establishment and operation of the new SPCs following the local elections in June 1999.

In taking his decision to set up the working group the Minister was conscious of the need to ensure that the SPCs were established and operated on a partnership basis. That is why the composition of the group was representative of as many relevant interests as possible. That is why the working group in turn engaged in an extensive consultation process in drawing up its report and why the guidelines explicitly deal with the need for fair play in the allocation of SPC chairs and SPC membership.

Chapter 6 of the guidelines goes into some detail about the need and desirability for the allocation of SPC chairs to reflect equitably the spread of elected representation on the council. The guidelines specifically underline the importance of local authorities adopting and implementing, and that they are clearly seen by the public to do so, an approach that ensures the various political and other interests represented on the full council are treated fairly. The guidelines go further and say that where agreement on the allocation of SPC chairs is not possible, the group of SPC chairs to be appointed should technically be treated as a group for appointment purposes under section 27 of the Local Government Act, 1985 to ensure an equitable spread of representation. The section 27 provisions were designed to allow a basic element of proportionality in appointments by local authorities to committees and other bodies. However, many local authorities, even prior to that Act, operated and continue, as they are entitled under the Act, to operate their own local and more finely developed arrangements to ensure fair play for all concerned.

Since the 1985 Act the Minister and his prede cessors have called on and exhorted councils to make appointments in an equitable fashion. The need for such equity has been especially underlined in the case of the SPCs. Even as recently as last June the Minister made regulations under the 1985 Act applying the principles of the section 27 procedures to appointments by local authorities to a range of bodies such as LEADER groups and county enterprise boards which have emerged since the passing of the 1985 Act.

However, I should point out to the Deputy that the selection of SPC chairs is, in the end, an operational matter for the local authority concerned and that ultimately it is probably impossible to legislate fully for good will and fair play. It is the electorate who are the final judge in such matters.

The Minister is, however, prepared to look at any specific proposal Deputies put forward to improve the current legislative arrangements in the context of the forthcoming local government Bill.