As I said a few moments ago. I consider that this debate is one of the most important we have had in this Chamber and indeed the Dáil. I greatly welcome the prospect that there may be meaningful changes and improvements in our local government system.
I have been hearing promises since 1971. We had a Green Paper at that time brought out by the Fianna Fáil Government which threatened to wipe out half the local authorities in Ireland. When we were governed from Westminster there was a fairly tight central Government system control but since this State was founded there has been a continuous effort made to bring about further centralisation. For years I have been listening to promises to reform local government. So far I have seen nothing happen, in fact, things have gone in the opposite direction. I am glad the 1971 proposals did not come to fruition because they seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
We have heard that the decision to postpone the local elections is to bring about a meaningful reform. One speaker said this morning that 14 local government elections have been postponed. That in itself shows the sort of contempt central government have for local government and for local authorities. It appears that local government exists at the whim of the Government; it is there to serve the Government of the day as it suits them. I do not believe that we have yet understood the serious problems and implications facing this country because we do not have local democracy. I suppose I am an eternal optimist but I hope something different will happen this time. I hope the Minister of State and his Department will recognise the serious problem, the serious challenge, the country is facing.
I would like to say one point in the context of the local government elections. It is an interesting point to note — I do not have the statistics here but everybody knows that what I am saying is correct — that the turnout at local government elections is far higher than for an election for the Dáil or the European Parliament. Understandably people are interested in what goes on at local level.
I have a couple of examples I would like to give. Looking back over 20 years involved in local affairs, and 16 years on the council, two things spring to my mind. We have a cottage in Connemara and I was involved with the introduction of a rural local water scheme. The locals with their local engineer from Galway did a very satisfactory job devising and making plans for that water scheme. There were many ups and downs but a very satisfactory solution seemed to have been thrashed out. It took a long time and we were all the while without water. The scheme had to go to the Department of the Environment; more engineers came from Dublin and started dictating to the local engineers and the local people. At the end of many, many months and very few changes we finally got our water scheme. I said to myself then, what a farce we have here, what a waste of resources, what a crying shame that we have here a system where local government is considered to be inept, incompetent and officials have to come from the Department of the Environment to tell local competent engineers what to do.
We had another funny little incident in our own council Chamber which I would like to relate to the House. I do not know whether Senator Bennett was there at the time. It may have been before her time in the council. We decided to introduce a no smoking regulation in City Hall some years ago. The following month a member lit a cigarette and somebody brought it to the attention of the Lord Mayor. There was a little argument up at the top and an official said to the Lord Mayor "No". The Lord Mayor then announced: "That cannot become law until it has been sanctioned by the Minister for the Environment". We cannot even introduce a no smoking regulation in our own Chamber without the sanction of the Minister for Local Government.
There are many other instances. We cannot introduce speed limits in housing estates. We cannot construct road humps to control road traffic to try to protect the lives of our children and our elderly people. We were five years trying to introduce a residential parking permit scheme, where people in areas around the city of Dublin were crying out for this because it was held up in the Department of the Environment. I am not blaming the Department of the Environment. They are grossly overworked but why will they not shed some of their workload and let local people make decisions? If they make the wrong decisions well and good. Do the Department never make a wrong decision? Are the Department always right? Why should it be that they consider they have some God-given ability always to make the right decisions and local people always to make the wrong decisions?
There has been an enormous contempt by central Government for the ability of local people to regulate local affairs with their local representatives in their own best interests. There have been very serious repercussions on our whole democratic system because local democracy is where people get their first taste of democracy. That is an aspect of the whole situation of which we should be aware. There also has been a very high social cost to be paid. People have become extremely frustrated. I had the fortunate experience last year and for a little while this year of travelling around the country in connection with the promotion of the Tidy Towns Competitions. My batteries are recharged every time I go to meet another local community. It is obvious how much potential, talent, ability and creativity there is around the country and how tragic it is that it does not get the sort of outlet it deserves. We simply do not care about local issues. Central Government has more important things on its plate.
I suggest to the Minister that we should look at and learn from some of our partners in western Europe. Indeed, probably very soon, we will be learning from our partners in eastern Europe, at the rate they are going and at the extent of stagnation here. All over Europe, and eastern Europe, bureaucratic centralism is at last decaying and people wish to participate in the spirit of the age, the whole spirit of the resurgence of democracy and the determination of people to take their affairs in hand and to be responsible, not as objects but as subjects playing an active and creative part in the development of their locality.
We have a problem with Government. I do not wish to get into a party political argument as to who did this or that. The situation is far too serious for us to take any party political stance. We have here a system of government which simply no longer is capable of serving the country. We are simply badly governed. This has been shown over and over again and now it is reaching crisis proportions. Quite simply, we suffer from acute bureaucratic centralism and all its consequences which are far-ranging. A sort of arteriosclerosis has set in. The whole thing has become grossly overweight. It has got out of control. The issues which need to be dealt with are not being dealt with and are not being faced up to.
The amount which is spent by Government is simply massive. It has been said that £1 spent by a voluntary organisation requires £10 spent by a statutory body to achieve the same objective. I have no doubt that that is true. I saw, in the promotion of the Tidy Towns competition that some of the local authorities have an enlightened policy where they automatically give £200 to every Tidy Towns Committee in their county. That £200 is most profitably spent because enlightened county managers realise that that added to the commitment and the input of local communities can come to quite a considerable amount at the end.
There is congestion at the top. How has it been solved to date? At the moment we keep talking about cutbacks but cutbacks are no longer the answer. I hope the Department of the Environment and the Minister recognise that. What we need is summed up in the word "subsidiarity". We need to change our thinking so that we give to local authorities, local groups, the ability to not only decide their own affairs but to implement those decisions. Anything which can be done at a local level should be done at a local level. The State and central Government must try to shed the load which they have, wittingly or unwittingly, taken on so that they can have the opportunity to devote themselves to the issues to which Government should be devoting themselves.
The Council of Europe published a table showing the proportion of GDP spent by 16 local authorities in the member states in 1981. The four at the top were Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Holland. The four at the bottom were Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece. Compared with our European neighbours, our local authorities have very little resources with which to run their affairs. Our problem is that we do not give our citizens the opportunity to take part in the process of government. We have here 115 elected bodies. In Denmark there are about 300; in Norway 450; and there are 750 in the Netherlands. In a small country like Austria there are 2,300 local authorities. Switzerland has 3,400 local authorities and a large country like France has 22 regions, 95 home departments, 325 sub-departments or arrondissements and 3,075 cantons and, wait for it, 36,000 communes. They elect something like half a million councillors. Yet, all we seem to be thinking about all the time if cutting back, cutting down on the number of local representatives. In Denmark two-thirds of the whole business of government is local government. What a change from the situation here.
The next problem we have is the functions which our local authorities are able to perform. They are tied down by bureaucratic rules and are generally, as I said already, treated with contempt by bureaucrats. I find most distasteful, as a member of the Dublin City Council for 16 years, the attitude of central Government and officials. I am not blaming individuals. They are caught up in the situation. They are caught up in these structures that have been foisted on them in the very same way.
There is no reason to imagine that they like it any more than we do. There is a lack of forward planning, the lack of opportunity to know what sort of funding is coming to us, the lack of response to letters, the dismissal of issues which are extremely important to us. They may be unimportant to Departments who have, understandingly, so many things on their plate but these are the issues which are important to us as the representatives of the people and in my case, the representatives of the people of Dublin, the capital city.
I would like to mention briefly the extraordinary situation we have in the country, the disparity between different parts of the country in relation to the ratio of elected members and the population. In Dublin City there is a population of 10,500 for each councillor elected while in County Leitrim, the ratio is one councillor to 1,250 people. When I stood for my first election to the city council in 1974, I had 63,000 people on my register. It was the largest electorate for a local or a national election.
The situation is quite ludicrous. In Dublin City, we have one councillor for every 10,500 people and we see the vast problems there are in Dublin. It does not make sense. Of course, this could not pertain at national level, this could not pertain for the Dáil elections. Equality there is mandatory and the courts can intervene as they did some years ago. No such restraint exists in relation to local elections. The voting ratios are fixed by ministerial order and gross inequity results. Is anyone seriously concerned about equity or inequality in this country? This is a problem which I hope the Minister will address when he is looking at all these issues.
The most important issue is that we face up to the involvement of communities in local Government structures. Quite simply put, it is the whole question of giving power to people and of moving away from our intensely centralised, intensely bureaucratised, system to a much more democratic one. I do not believe we can attempt to run the sort of would-be modern society we are talking about with the out-dated structures we have at the moment. We must be prepared to let go of these structures. Otherwise we will be like the nurse holding the little child and not being prepared to let the child take its first faltering footsteps even if it makes mistakes and falls. If this is our attitude to local government we will never make any progress.
Of course, local councils will make mistakes but they must be given the ability, they must be given guidance, encouragement and help, but they must be allowed, in the final analysis, to make their own decisions. We must have councils who can govern. They must be given full powers to deal with important issues, all the local issues, which are their remit
I hope the Government realise it is fairly well accepted that centralised national bureaucracies are utterly unsuited to the management of community services. Some services, admittedly, have to be organised along functional lines, but if we want to deliver services in a sensitive way, to individuals, to families and communities, if we want to do this not only efficiently but in a flexible and humane way, they must be organised on the basis of territory and not only of function. Many have been brave enough to make a lot of noise about the whole matter of the reform of local authorities but I wonder if, in a year from now, if we will see anything meaningful. Will there be any sort of devolution or will it be like the one exciting case we had recently where county councils had devolved to them the exceptional power of being allowed to license dogs?
It will take a strong Government, a determined Government, to break the grip of the bureaucrats in Dublin on these detailed tasks. The Minister and his colleagues in Government should look forward to such a change because it will mean that the Minister, with his talents and abilities, will be able to undertake the important strategic planning which is so vitally needed in this country instead of being overwhelmed with the day to day minutiae which can perfectly well be dealt with at local level. He would be released to do the genuinely important work which is crying out to be done. I do not think anybody can deny that.
However, I see some light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that there are thinking people in this country who have identified the problems. In the book, Ireland Towards a Sense of Place which formed the basis for a series of lectures in UCC done in conjunction with RTE and edited by Joseph Lee, there is a number of articles by Professor Rigley, Professor Lee and others in which are set out in unambiguous terms the problems facing us on both the economic front and the social front if change does not take place. I really believe there is a lot of discontent with the quality of Government. That is not meant in any personal way. The structures need to be changed.
We have, at county level, identifiable authorities and units. We must look at the range of functions and powers that can be given to them so that they can participate, creatively, in government and provide what is needed for their area. They are the best people to identify those needs. When we come to the regional situation, the muddle seems to be beyond belief. It is impossible to have any idea what the regional divide of the country is. It is constantly changing. We do not know how many regional divides we have or what sort of tasks are appropriate to a region. We have one regional development authority. All the others were abolished. We still have the Shannon Development Authority. They do an extremely creative job. They cover, I understand, only 10 per cent of the country but they have created in the last number of years, 25 per cent of the new jobs. I am aware that the creation of new jobs is one of the Minister's priorities. This is an area we should look at.
We have no concept of regionalisation. The saying "A Europe of the regions" simply means nothing to us. Regional planning will have to become part of our whole set up. It pulls together all the elements in an area, the central Government's contribution, local government, local communities, the private sector, voluntary bodies etc. They all come together in the region and there is a cross-fertilisation of ideas and a general encouragement, an inspiration to everybody which can only be good.
People like myself, who have been interested in debates and seminars on the Structural Funds, are very much aware of the tension between Ireland and the European Commission with regard to the whole question of regionalisation. We are very happy to take up all the funds that we can possibly get but we do not want to have anything to do with regionalism. This is an attitude the Commission will insist on us changing in the not too distant future.
The question of finance is something which I will not go into in detail but I would like just to touch on it briefly. I suppose in many ways it has been the worst aspect and most scandalously handled of all the depressing things about our Irish local government system. Fine Gael are correct when they say that we cannot look at the financing of local authorities in isolation from the question of overall financing and overall taxation because the two are inextricably bound together. Here again, we must look at the basic argument as to why local government exists. It must be for the democratic defusion of responsibility throughout society and to raise the general level of responsibility. What, of course, has been done in relation to local taxation is precisely the opposite. Local authorities must pay for at least part of what they do. That is a basic requirement. It is the very essence of what local government is all about. If local authorities make decisions they must be involved in the cost.
There is a whole range of ways in which finance can be raised and we should not see it as a case of local authorities having to sit with their begging bowls wondering how much they will get each year at the pleasure of Government. It has to be put on a sound financial basis. There are endless ways of raising money to finance local authorities and we should look at those in a new and unblinkered fashion. It all depends on our concept of local government, the whole idea of encouraging responsibility among citizens and, indeed, among councillors and local representatives.
The position of councillors who live in the more peripheral parts of the country is more frustrating than for those living in Dublin. We should be looking at how we can make the job of a local councillor more meaningful and more rewarding, and how can we help councillors assist constituents and how we can attract the best people into the local authorities. On my visits around the country and when talking to people about the Tidy Towns Competition, I found that people are prepared to make a commitment. They should not be pushed aside, or kept on the fringe, and politicians should not be fearful of them. They should be brought into the system so that they can make their contribution. We should be helping local councillors to provide leadership in their areas and to create a general climate where those people will be encouraged to make their contribution. Fundamentally, this is all about trying to bring people into government instead of the present system which seems to be concerned with keeping them out.
The role of local authorities in economic development has been disastrously overlooked. Unless we bring about reformed thinking — I do not want to get hung up on details — or adopt a new approach, we will not achieve the sort of economic development which is so vitally necessary. We simply need to challenge the public spirit of local communities. I would go as far as to say we are asking local communities and local authorities to behave in a statesmanlike way at a local level, because the issues are fundamentally important for their areas. It is interesting to see the extent to which local development associations are active, trying to fill the vacuum. As I said before, some local authorities welcome them, others do not, with disastrous consequences. There are exciting times ahead of us. Profound changes will result from the Single Market and from the dramatic changes in Eastern Europe.
There are very serious ecological problems which concern me and which will not be solved by wielding the big stick. The solutions to those problems must be found locally. We need an infinite number of local solutions if we are to cope with the serious issues of the environment and ecology. "Think globally, act locally", that is what we need to do, particularly in regard to the environment.
We also face the serious problem of a falling population of young people and, therefore, an increased number of elderly people. This will put dramatic extra pressures on the public service and on the whole area of health. I will not go into the area of local involvement in health. We all know the problem in regard to that. We have huge economic, ecological and cultural problems. Solutions to those problems will only be found if people have effective political power, if local government is strong and can offer a range of solutions and if it has the freedom and financial responsibility to come up with the solutions. The one who decides is the one who must pay.
Recently we have seen the arrival of the Structural Funds. There has been very limited — I said this before but I have great pleasure in repeating it — involvement by local authorities in the drawing up of plans for the Structural Funds. Their involvement has been abysmal, in my view. That is very apparent. If one keeps in touch and attends local conferences, as I do — I am now wearing my hat as a local councillor — one finds all round the country that our colleagues are frustrated, angered and annoyed by the lack of consultation. I do not believe that throwing money at problems will solve them. The £2.7 billion, or whatever we are getting, if used judiciously and in conjunction with local energy, could work wonders. I have great faith in this country and in its ability not only to survive but to thrive and prosper, but that will not be done by throwing money at problems and hoping that everything will turn out all right. We need that interface between the statutory and the voluntary if it is to survive. I am hopeful that we will be assisted by the European Community because they clearly — I have heard people from the Commission speak on this at seminars — want regionalisation. I hope, indeed, that the Minister's colleague, Commissioner MacSharry, during his term as a Commissioner, will understand the extent to which regionalisation can be important. Other bodies, such as Macra na Feirme, are in the same position. They are crying out for involvement. They believe that the wrong decisions are being taken with regard to a whole range of matters but they feel they are not being brought in or being consulted.
Earlier, I mentioned Professor Lee's contribution. We should be aware of the facts as put forward by dispassionate commentators. He said that: "We cannot avoid the conclusion that we have incomparably the worst record since 1921 of any economy in northern Europe, except the British". I should like to repeat that because it is one thing I would like the Minister to hear. Perhaps it is painful to listen to, perhaps he does not want to hear it. I suppose we listen only to the things we want to hear. Now, if I may, I will repeat it: We cannot avoid the conclusion that we have incomparably the worst record since 1921 of any economy in northern Europe, except the British.
The economies of Ireland and Britain have been the two economic laggards in the whole of Europe and it is interesting to note that they are the ones who have this very centralised system of Government. We will continue to fail, we will not thrive as a State, unless we address these fundamental problems. I have great faith in the Minister's commitment and ability to approach problems with a fresh mind. I was most impressed on the occasion of the Derelict Sites Bill which, after this motion, is of most interest to me, when the Minister gave unstintingly of his time and his interest. I hope the Minister, his Department and the Government will grasp this nettle because if they do not grasp it, and grasp it soon, I am afraid a sad situation is facing the country. There is also a need for local authorities, and for the many organisations that represent them — I suppose they are in despair having tried so often — to get involved, and to look for the powers they need. They should not be discussing irrelevant details but get down to the fundamental core of what we are talking about. I call on the people to demand the sort of involvement which they are entitled to expect in governing themselves, because we do live in a democracy. In this way we will give back to the people some of the self-esteem, self-confidence and self-reliance which they need and which is vital if they are to confront this problem which is largely bureaucratic and stems from officialdom.
I will end with a quotation from Al Smith which sums it all up. He said that all the ills of democracy can be solved by more democracy. Sadly, in this country we have seen the ills of democracy and we have taken the other route. We have tried to solve them by having less democracy. I hope that will be the Minister's fundamental thinking in the revision of local government, that we will solve the ills of our democracy if we introduce more democracy.