Waterford City Management Bill, 1939—Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. O Ceallaigh)

This Bill will extend to the City of Waterford the system of city management that is already in operation in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Dun Laoghaire. The powers and duties of the county borough council as formerly constituted will be transferred to the corporation and will then be exercised by a newly-constituted council in relation to certain reserved matters which are set out in detail in Section 11 and in relation to matters not reserved by the city manager to be appointed under the Act.

The new council will consist of 15 members, five of whom will be aldermen. The city will form one electoral area, but provision is made for the division of the city into two or more electoral areas after the first election. The council will have power to apply to the Minister for an order dividing the city into electoral areas and the Minister can make or refuse an order.

The first election will be held within three months after the passing of the Act and there will be no further election within two years. After the lapse of two years, the elections will be held in the same year in which a triennial election of county councillors is held. The new council will elect a mayor whose duties will be substantially the same as heretofore.

The council alone will have power to strike the municipal rate and to borrow money. There is also reserved to the council the power to make bylaws, bring permissive Acts into force, promote legislation and appoint representatives on public bodies. The power of the council can, if necessary, be extended by an order of the Minister. Subject to the usual safeguards the council will have power to appoint, suspend or remove the manager.

The city manager will be appointed on the recommendation of the Local Appointments Commissioners. Pending the permanent appointment being made, the Minister can nominate a temporary manager. The person appointed manager will also be town clerk. It will be the duty of the manager to furnish information to the mayor, attend meetings, advise the council, plan works which the council wish to have executed and control and supervise the staff. He will act by signed orders, of which a record will be kept and produced at every meeting of the council for the information of the members.

All the existing separate funds will be merged in a new consolidated fund which is called the municipal fund. A new municipal rate will take the place of the existing borough rate, poor rate and water rate. The contract water rate will remain. In order to preserve the existing partial exemptions as nearly as possible the municipal rate will be levied on seven-tenths of the valuation of arable land or meadow within the city and on three-fifths of the half-rents rateable under the Poor Relief Acts.

The Bill provides machinery by which an application by the corporation for extension can be examined and a Provisional Order obtained. The position of the officers and servants of the corporation will remain unchanged except that they will be under the control and supervision of the manager. Employees, if they have 20 years' service, are given the benefit of the provisions of Section 53 of the Local Government Act of 1925, with regard to superannuation, and this power can be exercised within a period of two years or longer if the Minister, on the application of the corporation, extends the period. The corporation may acquire lands and drain them if they are capable of being improved by drainage and such improvement would increase the amenities of the city. The lands which the section is to deal with are the Kilbarry marshes, which lie on the south boundary of the City of Waterford and are at present partly in the county. They form a large tract about 240 acres and are covered with water for the greater part of the year. The Bill has been presented with the object of making better provision for the administration of the municipal services in Waterford by bringing the system of civic government there into line with that now in operation in the other county boroughs.

Mr. Douglas

I think it is a matter of satisfaction that a Bill of this kind, extending the principle of city management, can be introduced by the present Government and that it can, as I believe it will, obtain, so far as the principle is concerned at any rate, support from every section of the House. It is, I think, a matter of considerable satisfaction that that is so, because it does not seem so very long since certain sections of the country were violently opposed to the principle, and I think it shows that, when a new principle is introduced, which is opposed but which, nevertheless, in practice works well, it is possible to get acceptance and to get the principle carried unanimously. Although the Minister did not expressly say so, I take it that there is no local opposition to this measure, and if that is the case I think it is one which can be supported by every one in this House. I, at any rate, am very glad to support it.

Mr. Goulding

As far as I am aware, there is practically no opposition to this Bill in Waterford City, and I think that the majority of the citizens approve of it and that, with the exception perhaps of some small details, it will meet with universal acceptance. There are one or two small matters to which perhaps it will do no harm to call attention. One is in connection with the extension of the borough boundary. The Minister stated that this applies practically entirely to the Kilbarry Marshes on the Waterford side of the city. I should like to know whether, if the council decided to reclaim these marshes, the area of charge would be confined to the council area within the boundary, or would it be extended to the county? Formerly, when this matter was before the County Council of Waterford, in consultation with the corporation, the difficulty was as to whether the area of charge should be confined to the city or extended to the county. The county held that whatever advantage would be derived would be entirely to the city and that the county ratepayers would derive practically no benefit from such a scheme. I do not think it is distinctly stated in the Bill that the area of charge is to be confined to the council, and I should like the Minister to let us know if I am right in my surmise that it can be extended to the county.

Some may take exception to the powers that will be vested in the manager. It will be said, of course, that the council will have the power to strike the rate, but will have no power in the expenditure of the money. Well, that is a debatable point, I suppose, but looking at it from the business point of view, there has been so much of a load placed on the shoulders of members of public authorities in the various counties now that it is almost impossible to have this work done by voluntary means. There has been too much of a load put on the shoulders of the public representatives to have this work carried out, and although I can see the danger in this type of measure of the introduction of the thin end of bureaucracy, still I must admit that, for the purposes of efficient administration, such a measure as this is essential. I have been a member of public bodies and I know what a tremendous amount of work was thrown on their shoulders, say, ten years ago, and that work has been considerably increased in the past few years, with the result, as I say, that it is almost impossible for the members to cope with it. I myself have often presided at meetings of a county board of health and, after seven hours' work, we could not get the agenda completed. I do not know how public bodies to-day manage to get through the agendas they often have to face, and whatever we might think about the danger of bureaucracy we must admit the necessity for such a change as this. Work, to be efficiently done, must be done by people who can devote their whole time to it, and under the present conditions and under the mass of work that councils now have to face, as I say, I think it would be almost impossible work for men meeting once a month or even once a fortnight, and when you take into account the various issues that arise and often cause a lot of controversy and keep men debating and disputing for hours at a stretch, you can understand how difficult it is to have the work completed satisfactorily. All things considered, I think we have to agree that this measure is essential, and I think it will claim universal support.

Mr. Butler

I welcome this Bill and I believe the citizens of Waterford are pretty well satisfied with its provisions. I know that the Minister accepted some amendments that were moved in the Dáil by Waterford representatives on behalf of the City of Waterford, and as a result of the Minister's acceptance of these amendments I am confident that the Bill is very much more acceptable now than it was when it was first introduced. I support the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mr. Honan

Of course, most of us are not directly interested in this Bill inasmuch as it applies to one city only, but had it been a general Bill, embracing all the urban councils of Eire, some of us might have something to say. I would refer particularly to Section 28 of the Bill where reference is made to unoccupied houses. That is a very sore point with most of the urban authorities in Eire, inasmuch as we find all buildings rated at the beginning of the year, including derelict old stores, houses and shops. They are all rated and you find, at the end of the year, that only about five-sixths of the rate is productive; that is, that approximately one-sixth of the valuation of a town is non-productive. That affects the town adversely, in this way: when the county council are making their demand on the urban authority for their proportion of the poor rates they base their figure on the full valuation of the town, whereas, as I said before, about one-sixth of it is non-productive. The urban authorities then find that they have to pay a poor rate to the county council on unoccupied shops, stores and private houses from which they collect nothing. I do not know if Waterford is paying a rate to the county council. If it does I think that matter should be taken into consideration even for waterford.

If this Bill related to the urban towns in general some of us would have considerably more to say. As a matter of fact, I think most of the urban authorities at the present time are contemplating—at least I am contemplating and it is a common view —that urban towns must be deurbanised altogether. The business of small towns has decreased so much owing to the revolutionary change in the distribution of goods that they will never be able to carry a double rate. I think the time is near at hand when the Government, whatever Government is in power, will find it necessary to de-urbanise small towns and have the small towns run by the county manager and on a flat rate with the rest of the county. I understand that we will have more local government legislation in the neat future and the Minister who, among others, has always been associated with cities and towns, should at least understand something about towns. We generally find, both in the Dáil and the Seanad, that nobody seems to care two hoots what happens to towns. All the talk is about, well, other sections of the community. The Minister here present should at least understand because, as I have said, he has been associated with the workings of towns and cities all his life. I do wish now to bring before his notice the possibility that in future legislation he will take into consideration the desirability of de-urbanising small towns. It will take a bit of organisation, I know. They have borrowed moneys that could not be made good by the rest of the county but every urban town has incomes from houses and various sources, and I think the incomes would pay off the interest and sinking fund on all their loans. Savings could be effected in eliminating the duplication of the staffs that exist at the present time. There are borough surveyors, county surveyors and assistant county surveyors all over the place and there is no reason why one set of officials should not work the county and a small urban town in their stride. This has no strict relation to the Waterford Bill. I am saying it chiefly because I wish the Minister to bear it in mind for a future occasion.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I think that the principle of managership, certainly in boroughs, if not elsewhere, has been generally accepted as a good principle and, as the House knows, it has been pretty widely extended in the last few years. I do not know, except from perhaps the Labour Party, that there was at any time strong objection in principle to managerial control. I know that in the Dáil, when I went in there early, I and my Party took an interested part in discussing the Dublin Bill, but my recollection is that it was on questions of detail, not on the question of the principle of introducing a city manager into Dublin, that there was opposition from the Party with which I was associated.

Mr. Fitzgerald

On a point of fact. A prominent member of the Minister's Party denounced us as going against Papal Encyclicals on that Bill.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

I am sure I can quote many members of the Senator's own Party who said the same.

Mr. Fitzgerald

I question that.

Mr. Baxter

Give us the quotations.

Cathaoirleach

It would not be permissible to give quotations from the Papal Encyclicals at this stage.

Mr. O Ceallaigh

With regard to the point raised by Senator Goulding, the Corporation of Waterford would first have to ask for and then get its boundaries extended before it could take in the Kilbarry Marshes and if the city's boundaries were extended to take in these marshes they would become the property of the city, so to speak; they would come within the boundaries of the city; it would be for the corporation to decide what they wished to do with them in the way of drainage and they themselves and the citizens of Waterford would be responsible for whatever charge would accrue arising out of the improvements. The county could not be assessed for rates for something they were not responsible for.

I was rather surprised to hear a Senator from County Clare, I think, suggesting that the county council might take in the town of Ennis. I gathered that was what was at the back of his mind, although he did not say that definitely. I wonder if the Senator would receive in that the whole-hearted support of his citizens? I know he is in a responsible position to speak for the town, but I think that the people of Ennis would believe they were not certainly adding to the prestige of their town by being included in and put under the control of the county. I would like to hear further expressions of opinions from the Senator and representatives on the various local authorities or on the urban council of Ennis as to whether they would like that idea put into operation.

I think we have three petitions or requests at the present time from different towns wanting to give up their urban status and be taken over and controlled by the county council. That is a new kind of development. It has occurred before, but it is a new kind of development that is being watched with interest by the Department of Local Government. We are considering the problem because these three cases have arisen and it is quite possible as we can see from reports we get from our inspectors, that there will be other moves from other towns in that direction. Possibly Senators here know that there is a prospect, as has been mentioned before in the Dáil, that a County Managership Bill will be introduced, and when that is brought in and passed through the Oireachtas it is possible that there may be other towns making the request that these three towns I speak of have recently made. It may be that the system may become so popular in certain smaller urban areas that they would like to be included under the county council and under the managers that will be appointed. It is also possible that economies could be made if that system were adopted but, for the moment, beyond the three cases that are under consideration, it is not likely that the system will be adopted in any other towns.

So far as the managerial system has been in operation up to the present since it was first introduced in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Dun Laoghaire, I think I can say that it has worked with satisfaction. There have been individual cases of complaint, mostly from Cork. There have been practically no complaints of the system in Dublin, none in Dun Laoghaire and none in Limerick so far. It has not been so long in operation in Limerick. There have been some complaints with regard to Cork, and there are at present under consideration some amendments of the system to meet criticisms that have been made by public men in the City of Cork. But, on the whole, the system has worked well and advantageously for everyone concerned. I think that is creditable to all who had a part in introducing it.

Committee Stage ordered for Thursday, 20th July.

Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 19 Jul 1939