Seanad Public Consultation Committee debate

The Future of Local Democracy: Discussion (Resumed)

An Cathaoirleach

I welcome everyone to this Seanad public hearing on the future of local democracy in Ireland. We began this process in July and put out a call for submissions. We have had three different hearings. Uniquely, we had a representative of the Democratic Unionist Party in this Chamber talking about their challenges in Northern Ireland under their elected bodies association.

We have had the Association of Irish Local Government, LAMA and public representatives from all our constituency areas, including the Lord Mayor of Dublin and cathaoirligh from around the country. We have also had members of the public, former public representatives and former Ministers with responsibility for local government giving of their insight and their views as regards the past 30 years of change, some of it good, a lot of it not so good, such as the stripping away of powers and the centralisation of powers and functions. Many of you have served in local government and seen responsibilities you had in respect of housing, water, roads, planning - literally what used to be the functions of local government - centralised, taken away, with unaccountable agencies put in charge. They are unaccountable not only to local government but also to Ministers and do not respond to Government Departments. That is our concern.

I thank the members of the committee. This is a select committee; it is not of the whole Seanad. People from all the political parties are part of the committee, and we have invited all the parties and different groupings within Leinster House to make submissions here today. The sequence is in alphabetical order of the parties and groupings. That is the way we have done it. Without further delay, I call on, for the Civil Engagement Group, Senator Alice-Mary Higgins. You have six minutes, Senator.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

These are important discussions to have. I lead the Civil Engagement Group in the Seanad. We are a group of four Independent Senators: Senators Frances Black, Eileen Flynn and Lynn Ruane and me. While we are Independent, we have a number of principles in common. One of the key ones - it brought us together, in fact - is the desire to strengthen links between civil society and politics and to deepen and widen the practice of democracy in any way we can see. The closest point for democracy for most people in Ireland is local government. Unfortunately, that point moved a little further away when we lost the town councils. That was a mistake. Anything that moves decision-making further away from people is a mistake. When I talk to people about politics and policy and encourage them to get involved, sometimes they may be alienated from believing in politics and policy and their potential and possibilities. I always say that politics and policy are the decisions we make about how we live together. That is all they are. That is at local level, at national level and right up to international level. That is why things like the sustainable development goals are really important. They are a blueprint for how we could live together better and more sustainably at local level, at national level and on this shared planet.

Unfortunately, in Ireland, decision-making about how we live together at local level has been absolutely hamstrung and limited. Executive decision-making in local government has been extremely undemocratic. It does very little to foster community empowerment or strengthen democracy. The Council of Europe has confirmed this in a report expressing concern. Members, I am sure, will be very familiar with the report. It refers to the fact that Irish local authorities have limited decision-making powers, with a huge imbalance of power between the elected councillors and the chief executives, which leads to a democratic deficit, and that Ireland has the most centralised system of local government in Europe. New functions and responsibilities are being transferred but, in fact, the power to manage those public affairs and responsibilities does not often sit at local level. This means that Ireland is not really compliant with the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that decisions should be made at the closest possible point to the citizen. Crucially, the Council of Europe recognised insufficient financial resources and autonomy for local councillors and the fact that Ireland's local authorities have significant financial constraints, which severely limits their ability to provide services and respond to local needs, local vision and the local ideas of what a place could be and should be.

I come back to some of these issues and the solutions we believe it is really important to look at. It is fundamental that we look at the likes of directly elected mayors. Directly elected mayors will build a connection for citizens, but what is really important is that they are not just figureheads. What we are actually talking about when we talk about this and the taking of power back is strengthening the power of both mayors and councils rather than the huge allocation of powers to chief executives, who ultimately do not have that mandate in the same way and have a responsibility to government and to their employers, effectively, rather than to those who elected them.

As regards financial resources, I personally support the property tax measure, but these are inadequate and problematic measures. As regards the issue of how they should or could be applied progressively, not enough discretion is given to councils to find progressive ways to move these forward.

There are also other areas we need to look at. One of the key issues with vacant sites and derelict sites and the new land tax valuation is the fact that the moneys raised will not go to local level or be used at local level, and they should be. Also, a hotel room tax needs to be looked at and has been looked at in other parts of the world. I think in San Francisco it is ring-fenced for culture and community spending.

There are a number of other ideas we could look to. I see I am running short of time already, but there are many ways we could strengthen and address each of those three issues: the strengthening of powers, dealing with centralisation and remunicipalisation. I do not have time to dive into the third but it needs to be named as something that could be very significant and transformative at local level.

I want to highlight planning because it is really important. Planning is part of democracy. It is part of deciding about how we live together and what the place we share is like. Unfortunately, we have seen a huge erosion recently and under this Government of powers at local level from changes arising from the Land Development Agency, whereby councillors were prohibited from attaching conditions to the transfer of land and the local level was skipped entirely as regards retention and extension of planning permission. Crucial are the proposals now before us in respect of the planning Act, such as moving from a six-year to a ten-year development plan, which will effectively mean that some elected councillors will never get to have a say in the really important thing they are elected to do, which is the plan for their area. Local development plan provisions have been overturned. We have seen that in South Dublin County Council's wise policy against data centre development, which was overturned by central government.

I want to mention sustainable development goals and climate because they are global areas where there can be local leadership. We saw that across America in C40 Cities, which we are still not in. They may seem like global-level issues, but with the proper powers local councils can lead on them.

Finally, one strong thing we do have going for us in local democracy in Ireland is that people still care and we see so many people who put themselves forward for election. We have one of the highest levels of candidacy anywhere in Europe. That needs to be matched by the powers, the resources and the respect for those who show their respect by standing.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

It is a great pleasure to be back in the Seanad, having been in the Dáil only four years. I spent my first few months in this Chamber, so it is a great pleasure to be back and to represent Fianna Fáil. I offer the apologies of our party leader, who I think is on his feet at the moment in the Dáil. I will preface my remarks by saying that while I have nearly ten years of experience in local government, there is far greater experience here in the Seanad. That is because the Seanad is the ultimate expression of our local government system, with Senators elected in the main by local councillors. The Senators here are in touch with our local councillors every single day not only on local issues but also on the strategic issues. I pay tribute to that expertise and those Senators who are elected by local councils.

In the recent local election, we saw councillors elected in every part of our country, those with great experience and many new faces.

The experience of being in a count centre adds a much more compassionate and human element to the debate that perhaps the online world provides. Even the most hardened critics of each other must stand beside each other at a tally and often with their mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters. Our system of local government does provide that connection and, hopefully, drives out some of the hostility that we see online. Councillors are elected from all parts of Irish society. They are united by a shared conviction that we need an active and constructive council system. We need to do that to improve the communities in which we live.

The series of reforms under the current Government have been implemented. That means local councils have greater certainty in regard to their powers. They also have an opportunity to focus on delivering strategic and community-level services. We believe that we can do more at local council also. I think that the first priority must remain housing and as the housing authority, the local authorities have a role.

Local councils have a far greater range of tools to respond to the housing crisis now than they would have had four years ago. When I was a member of Dublin City Council we had no money to deliver public housing or mechanism to provide different housing, for example, cost rental, affordable purchase, etc. We also had no ability to deliver mixed communities and no partnership other than the executive. Housing for All has given a significant range of tools now to local authorities to respond to the housing challenge. While the criticism remains in respect of the Land Development Agency, in fact the LDA is working as a strategic partner with many local authorities to develop land. Of course if the local authority itself is developing that site then there is no need for that to go to the LDA at all. As I say, the primary responsibility now for councils and councillors across the entire country is to use the tools that Housing for All has provided, to implement them on the ground and to provide the housing that people need.

We have also implemented a range of changes, not only just in the schemes for the delivery of housing but also oversight, with the Minister ensuring that every local authority is actively pushed to increase the level of home building and note the output as well.

Action on bringing back homes in terms of vacant and derelict buildings has been significant, and I recognise the work done by the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, who is beside me, and that of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien. It has made an impact on our local towns. In terms of providing additional appropriate land for housing, that is among the many measures which are being brought forward.

I could talk more about the Town Centre First policy and the many other measures that exist but I will refer to the increase in the pay and conditions for councillors, the sick leave and maternity provisions, and the provision to cover the basics that enable people to communicate with their electorate. The days of standing over the photocopier in City Hall to produce black and white leaflets are gone. We give local councillors more of a remit but I think we could do more. We could do more in terms of pay and conditions, family leave and covering the costs for local councillors.

In my remaining minute and a half I wish to say that the things that we need to improve still remain. For me, the act of people participating in the system of local democracy is key. I saw some really great councillors from all parties not run in the last local elections because, for a range of reasons, they felt that it was not the way forward for them and they could not provide the same impact that they would have had when they first joined the council. That is really sad. We do need to provide more powers for councillors because that attracts strong, talented people who want to make a difference.

On a directly elected mayor, I chaired the Oireachtas committee on the citizens' assembly on a directly elected mayor. It was a very ambitious document. Perhaps it was too ambitious and vague. The Government now needs to bring forward a very detailed legislative outline of what a directly elected mayor for Dublin would look like. Let us not forget that every local authority in the country now has the power to trigger a plebiscite for a directly elected mayor. County managers have way too many powers and almost every Member of the Oireachtas would say so. Local authorities now have the power to trigger a plebiscite in their county to hold a plebiscite for a directly elected mayor, to wrestle that power back from the chief executive. The question is whether local authorities will take up that challenge.

An Cathaoirleach

The Deputy is on the button, for which I thank him. Anois I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Alan Dillon.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Alan Dillon)

A Chathaoirligh and members of the committee, it is an absolute pleasure and honour to be here with them on behalf of An Taoiseach and the leader of Fine Gael, Deputy Simon Harris, and as the Minister of State with responsibility for local government and planning.

First, I commend the committee on taking on the important topic of the future of local democracy. I also commend the committee members on the very thorough manner in which they have gone about their work over the past number of weeks and months.

It is fitting that this committee is considering these matters in the year that we mark the 125th anniversary of the first local government elections in this country. I take the opportunity to congratulate all of the people who ran in this year’s local elections. I wish them all the very best in their term in office. They have at this stage taken up their councillor roles and met for the very first time in their new plenary councils. They have a critical and important role to fulfil over the next five years.

It has been said, including at this committee, that the system of government in this country is too centralised and, as a consequence, our local government system is weak, and has fewer functions and less autonomy than many of our European neighbours. It is important to recognise that local government is a constitutionally separate arm of Government and local authorities are fully independent entities with responsibility under the law for the performance of their functions. While it may be that local government here does not hold the full range of functions delivered by local government in some other European countries, local government in Ireland still delivers services vital to the running of our economy, cities, towns and villages, and communities. Our 31 local authorities play a key role in making the places in which we live, impacting the lives of citizens in many different, sometimes unnoticed and unheralded, ways.

In fact, local authorities provide in excess of 1,100 services often in partnership with some 30 central Departments and public bodies. Many of those programmes are key deliverables under critical Government policies. For example, the national development plan, Housing for All, active travel, Age Friendly Ireland, Town Centre First and the climate action plan among many others, all require significant local authority input to deliver.

The role of local authorities in the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine humanitarian response are fundamental to the State’s ability to manage those emergencies. I would argue that the strengthening of our local government system is, therefore, an evolving process and I would accept the more needs to be done in this space.

The 2014 local government reform legislation was an important step in that evolution. Those reforms introduced significant new economic and community development functions to local government. They dissolved 80 town councils, which represented only 14% of the population, without representing the wider hinterland, and provided for the establishment of 95 municipal districts, covering the entire area of local authorities. This has been a contentious topic that many Senators and councillors have raised previously in this forum. The 2014 reforms also introduced important new public participation mechanisms, like the public participation networks and the local community development committees.

A further, very significant evolution was the introduction this year of a directly elected mayor in Limerick. It is another key reform milestone. I take this opportunity to congratulate John Moran on his election as Mayor of Limerick and look forward to working with him in the near future.

I am pleased to report that local authorities are now in a stable financial position, following the financial crisis for many years. While funding from central government must be used for specific services, 56% of local authority revenue income is derived from local sources such as commercial rates, charges for goods and services, and the local property tax.

As well as elected mayors having discretion to influence the level of income raised, they also have discretion to determine local spending priorities through the adoption of annual budgets. The Government also introduced significant improvements, as Deputy McAuliffe said, in the terms and conditions available for councillors, all of which make the role more accessible and sustainable. They include a 56% increase in the annual salary-type payment since 2021, a new allowance scheme to assist councillors in carrying out their roles similar to that available for Dáil Members, an improved retirement gratuity scheme, the introduction of maternity leave for councillors and a maternity-related administrative support allowance, and a new security allowance to help councillors enhance their personal security arrangements. These improvements played a positive part in the high rate – 86% in total - of sitting councillors declaring to contest the 7 June elections.

I thank the committee for undertaking this worthwhile consultation and for the invitation to attend today. I look forward to further discussions on this matter.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Malcolm Noonan)

This is a great opportunity for us to have input into this important process. I served for 16 years as a councillor on Kilkenny County Council. Being the only Green in the village was often challenging during that time. It was very difficult at times because I took a contrarian view on issues and I felt isolated. At the same time, it was a rewarding experience. I respectfully disagree with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, in relation to the 2014 reforms putting people first. With the greatest respect, the Minister of State has hit the ground running since coming into the Department and is doing fantastic work but Phil Hogan's reforms decimated local government. The abolition of borough and town councils was a political stroke that undermined local accountability. I was a member of one of the five borough councils and the Kilkenny corporation had a history dating back to the 13th century.

Now more than ever, the urban agenda is distinct from a wider county and rural agenda. The urban agenda across the EU is around participation in climate plans and the recently adopted nature restoration law, sustainable development goals, natured-based solutions, town centre first - all initiatives that need a specific urban focus. We could not get everything we wanted in the programme for Government. The Green Party wanted to bring back borough and town councils. A future government should consider doing that.

The directly elected mayor is positive. As Deputy McAuliffe said, the option is available now for other local authorities to follow suit. I wish John Moran the best in his tenure but we should mirror what is happening at a European level, not just with directly elected mayors but also their ability to elect a cabinet and implement a five-year programme for government. That is important.

On the Moorhead reforms for councillors' pay and conditions, the implementation is welcome but the overarching structure, broader role of elected representatives at local level and strategic focus Moorhead spoke to also need to be considered. A lot of this is just random thoughts. I will try to get them out in the three minutes I have. It is about participatory planning and people moving away from linear public Part 8 processes. We need to move to a default of using participatory planning methods. Similarly, with participatory budgeting, there is the issue of transparency and decision-making, livestreaming meetings and the local media reporting fund. There is a deficit at local level due to the decimation of local newspapers and radio and their capacity to report on what happens at council meetings. That would also improve transparency.

On the bigger picture, the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, is correct that the elected member has an important role in development plans, the national planning framework, climate action plans, Housing for All, the national biodiversity action plan and the nature restoration plan, which will affect the urban agenda as well as housing strategy. There is quite a lot. Co-design and collaborative planning need to be embedded in local government. We also need to consider other means of generating income for local authorities. Overreliance on rates leads to and drives dereliction in towns. Perhaps energy supply companies and the tourist tax Senator Higgins mentioned could be considered.

There are a number of other critical points. Training for elected members needs to be more focused and specific in relation to the changed role local authorities now have, particularly on climate, biodiversity and nature-based solutions. Could local authority members leave the local government five-year cycle with a relevant qualification? Should we look at limiting the number of terms councillors serve to three? It is the idea of mirroring European local government, reaching out, looking at the Committee of the Regions, deepening our connections with European local authorities and learning from those shared experiences.

The Electoral Commission has an important role in participation in our electoral system. Thankfully, there was a marked increase in people from minority backgrounds contesting the local elections, which I welcome. Quite a number of them were successful in getting elected. We need greater diversity and more women in our local council chambers.

On apprenticeships, we were talking about turning around voids in local authority housing stock. Back in time, local authorities were able to take on apprentice plumbers and electricians and were able to do that work in-house rather than tendering it out. We should move back to that.

From a heritage perspective, I would love to see an entire heritage team in local authorities - a heritage officer, biodiversity officer, architectural conservation officer, archaeologist and archivist. Having those interdisciplinary skills in-house would be fantastic and save the local authority money in tendering out such work. I welcome the opportunity to speak. I put forward quite a lot of ideas.

An Cathaoirleach

I call Deputy Pringle, representing the Dáil Independent Group.

Deputy Thomas Pringle

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend. I represent the Independent Group in Dáil Éireann. We are a group of Independents, as the name suggests. Any views I give are my own and are not representative of the group.

I was elected to Donegal County Council in 1999 and left to come to the Dáil in 2011. I have some experience from my time in the local authority. If we look at local authorities and how they developed, the history is interesting. We have to look at the history to see where we need to go in the future. It is widely known that the local government structure we have now, with city and county managers in control of local authorities, was established in 1940 with the City and County Managers Act. That is the historical context and goes back to the foundation of the State, when local councils basically looked after their own in various ways. The Act was brought in to try to deal with that. We need to move on from that now.

In the early years after the formation of a state, these kinds of things happen. We have to mature and go on from that. What we have now is not a system of local government; it is a system of county managers running the show. Councillors are effectively the opposition in the local authority - they should take on that role. At the moment, councillors go along with the perception that they are in control of the councils, which is detrimental to local areas and how the council works. Donegal County Council has been traditionally run by Fianna Fáil, Independent Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. There is this idea that they run the council - they do not. They decide who goes on committees and to conferences. That is all they have ever done.

They may decide who gets to chair a strategic policy committee. That is how this has developed over the last number of years, in the context of the supposed development of the local authorities. We should have a local authority system where the councillors, whoever they are, who form the majority on the council control the council and drive it into the future. It would be similar to but more effective than what we have in the government system. That is when we might get real local democracy and local elections that make a difference to people's lives in local areas. That is vitally important and should be the driving force in any review looking at how local authorities are run and how they should be changed.

Local authorities should be politically driven and politically run. In many cases, the wrong political view take would be wrong from my perspective, but it will take time to change that as well and it is something we have to be prepared to live with. In the current situation the local authorities are basically a conduit for Government money into the area and just do what the Government asks or tells them to do. The county manager system will not challenge the Government, put anything different to it or take any decisions coming from the local area up and pass them on because the country managers and their staff are looking at their potential for employment after they retire. They are looking to go to the Department and places like that, so we have this system they will not challenge. That is a real problem. The manager system knows what the Department wants and therefore any idea has to be couched in that way when put to the Department because then the authority might have a chance of getting some money from it.

We have this whole system that is ineffectual and does not benefit local people at all. For example, Donegal County Council has been trying to get money back from the Department for the purchase of a site for €2 million for donkey's years. I forget how long ago it is but the Department controls everything within housing. We heard earlier about how councillors could decide how they do housing and stuff like that. I would love to see that happen but I do not think I will. If Donegal County Council wants to develop a housing site, it must first get permission from the Department to buy the land and then it must get its permission to appoint an architect. Then it must do the plans and send them to the Department, which must approve the plans. What is the point in having the council acting as a middleman, basically, for the Department?

We should have a local authority system where the Government gives a council €50 million and tells it to do with that what it sees fit. There would be an audit system in place to ensure the funding is spent properly, but the Government would not direct how that money is spent down to the fine detail. That is the problem we have. The Government's role in the local authority system has been detrimental for many years.

I agree with the Minister of State on the 2014 Act. It was a disgrace and it destroyed a lot of local authorities. It resulted in the dissolution of the 80 town councils which were the purest form of local democracy we have ever seen. In Donegal, there were urban district councils in Letterkenny, Bundoran and Buncrana. They were working on behalf of the people and citizens in the area, which is what we should be doing. We should go back to having more local authorities rather than fewer of them. That would ultimately bring us a proper system that would work for citizens. It is vitally important.

An Cathaoirleach

Senator Boyhan is representing the Seanad Independent Group.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I welcome the Ministers of State, Deputies Dillon and Noonan. I find myself in a somewhat different set of circumstances. I am sitting to the right when I normally sit to the left and I am sitting in the back. Hence, I am standing and I am a member of this committee, yet I am presenting to it. I do not intend going back over there to ask myself questions before running back over here.

An Cathaoirleach

We would start to worry about you then Senator, to be honest.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I have done it in the past. I will touch on a few issues. We talk about local government or local administration. We do not have local government; we have local administration at best. We had the local elections earlier this month and filled 949 council seats. As a reminder, Fianna Fáil won 248, Sinn Féin 102, Fine Gael 245, the Green Party 23, the Labour Party 56, the Social Democrats 35, People Before Profit-Solidarity 13, Aontú 8 and Independents 186. I said the latter figure with a louder intonation because I will return to it in a minute. There is then a group called "Others". I am not going to spend too much time teasing all that out, but there are 33 councillors in that group. I am making this point because in the last few days, we have seen tribalism at its best in our 31 council chambers. We have seen the divvying-up of chains, chairs and positions, especially paid positions and I challenge the Ministers of State on that because it is simply not good enough. There has to be a scenario in which every one of the 949 elected members has a legitimate mandate to serve his or her community and the people he or she represents, subject of course to being in compliance with the law and having respect for diversity and difference.

We have constitutional provision for local government and we do not use that enough. That is an important point. We must have fairness and respect. Let us have an end to the tribalism because tribalism can go on. The majority of Members of the Seanad are elected by councillors and you cannot rock up in six months' time and look for votes from certain sectors of this group if you are not going to be supportive of and consistent with them. The challenge for this committee and, more important, the Ministers of State is to ensure we have fairness and equal distribution and that all political groups in the council chambers are represented in the corporate policy group, CPG. Those who know anything about local government will be aware that a person must be a chair of a strategic policy committee to be on the CPG. The CPG is very significant within the functions of the local authority. A very enlightened chief executive in Westmeath County Council extended an invitation to all members who were not represented on the CPG. The members in question did not have voting rights. The Ministers of State should look at that option. Let let us not exclude people from the process. Let us include them.

We need more devolved powers. We can come in here and talk ad nauseam about local government, but what is this report going to do? What are we going to do? Are we going to ask the political parties to consider incorporating local government reform in their manifestos? We have that anyway. We do not need this committee to do that. Each party has its own mechanisms and systems and I would like to think there was some decency or democracy within that which provided for it. That is not a runner as far as I am concerned. We must approach it more strongly than that by appealing directly to central government as regards where we are going to see devolved government. We need to devolve powers.

Why am I reading every week that the Minister is giving funding of €35,000 to a local authority? Every few weeks on gov.ie, there are all these announcements of funding to local authorities. Why are local authorities going back for all sorts of approval? Everything is centralised. There are the great announcements, the Ministers cutting ribbons and opening roads all over the country and the sports capital grants. There are queues and queues of people. Everyone wants to announce it. Let us empower elected councillors to get on with the job. Unfortunately, central government and politicians in Dáil Éireann want to keep government centralised so that they are giving out the goodies. We are going to see it in the run-up to the election. We are going to see loads of money dished out. Using taxpayers' money to convince them to vote for the Government is not proper democracy.

I have always been a strong advocate for sitting county councillors. Let us support and resource them.

A number of councillors who presented to this committee have not been re-elected. A number of councillors who have presented to this committee in recent months chose to leave local government, and we need to understand why.

I thank the committee and the Chair for facilitating dialogue and discussion. We need a strong recommendation for how we are going to support our city and county councillors, and we need a charter and a commitment for the next Government as to how it will set out a schedule and a timeframe for devolving more powers, subsidiarity at its best, to our local communities and our local elected representatives.

Deputy Michael Collins

I thank the Cathaoirleach for holding this meeting. Senator Boyhan cited the number of elected councillors for each party. I do not know whether he threw us under Independents or "others", but we are neither. We are Independent Ireland, a new party with 23 councillors, one MEP and three TDs, and we hope we will grow, but we will find that out as time goes on. I sincerely hope this meeting is not a talking shop, because democracy is being eroded day by day in this country and it has been going on for a number of years. We talked about the town councils, but I worry it works its way through to the community councils and local community organisations. They are dying a death, especially in more rural areas I know about, and that is a destruction of our democracy. The LEADER groups took that away from the local people and it is more politicised now, which was a shockingly bad move when it happened a number of years ago under the previous Government.

I was elected to the council in June 2014 and to the Dáil in February 2016. In the short time I was on the council, if there were water problems, you could work in the local council to get them resolved. You could talk about refuse and get it resolved, and you could look into county development plans and get something good for your community. County managers listened. Now, it seems as though it is dictation from the top. You cannot say anything but for being pointed to Irish Water. Nobody speaks on its behalf, except when it is brought before the Dáil every once a while in committees, where the representatives answer questions for a couple of hours and that is the end of it. For local public representatives, it is a disaster. Refuse has gone out of the control of local authorities. County development plans come and go and nobody has a say in them. It is all dictated from the top. Councillors have to play ball, and if they do not, they will be singled out as a bad boy in school, and we know what happens to bad boys in school.

As I said, I hope this will not be a talking shop. I hope it will focus on how we can create solutions and give democracy back to the people. We saw last night that whether Members of the Dáil were in favour of the migration pact or not, it was a disastrous decision. It should have been given back to the people to make that decision on such an important issue, the sovereignty of our country. That decision should have been made by the people. I guarantee that the majority of the people of Ireland wanted that to happen, and they do not want referendums every day of the week. They would have made a clear decision but they were denied that. We are talking about democracy being there for the people and so on, but what we did last night in our own Dáil was the reverse of that.

Planning was mentioned. So many people have difficulty with planning in their local towns to get houses or whatever. Again, county development plans are no longer dictated by the local councillors, but they should be. They should at least have a strong say in them. Even where they do have a say now, there is a planning regulator to make sure it will be blocked one way or the other. Democracy is being beaten down, every which way it can be, and that is what led to the set-up of Independent Ireland and will lead to more and more Independents being elected. People are frustrated and they feel that the parties have let them down. It is time for the parties to sit up, listen to the people and work with them.

I am not here to point the finger at anyone, because I have made mistakes in my life, as we all do, but when we talk away town councils and see the little units of democracy being eroded bit by bit with the LEADER groups and so on, we are taking the power away from the people and they are sick of that. They want a bit of their own power back. They elect people to represent their views. They do not think their views are being represented in the Houses of the Oireachtas, and they do not think they are being represented at the local authorities. That is why only 50% of people are voting. It is leading to frustration but the worst thing they should ever do is stay at home, so we are going to have to do a lot of deep thinking. Personally, I respect anyone who puts forward proposals on where we could improve, but I will not attend meetings if I think they are going nowhere. If they are talking shops, I will be out the door. It is as simple as that. People spend six minutes on something they know is going to go nowhere. I am here to make improvements, ever so small, as long as they happen, but if they will not work, I will have to accept that and work through some other channel.

As for where we should do that, we should look at our local authorities and give back bits of power to the local councillors, regardless of whether they are from a party, are an Independent or something else. If that does not work, I shudder to think what is going to happen next.

Senator Mark Wall

Much like Senator Boyhan, I am on both sides, but I have chosen to stay on the left. I make this presentation today on behalf of Deputy Bacik, leader of the Labour Party, who, unfortunately, cannot be with us today.

It has been 125 years since the first local elections were held in Ireland, and there is a case to be made that now, more than ever in those 125 years, we need a fundamental reform of local government. We need to rebalance public administration in favour of communities and local decision-making. We often hear the frustration of city and county councillors about their limited powers. Indeed, many of us have experienced those frustrations. Our system of local government is one of the most centralised in Europe. We are consistently at or near the bottom of the European local authority index. That centralisation has continued under the current Government over the past eight years, with even more restrictions placed on the role of councils and councillors. I am thinking, for example, about the ever-reducing role in planning and development and the use of ministerial planning guidelines and rigid national and regional planning frameworks. The Planning and Development Bill progressing through the Oireachtas will weaken the role of councillors further.

Various efforts have been made at local government reform over the years but devolution has never really been a priority in those efforts, and we remain overly centralised in contrast to other European states. Local government plays a far more devolved role in many of our neighbours' local government systems, in areas such as education, public transport and healthcare. The recent Council of Europe report on Irish local government is illuminating. It notes that the extent of ministerial supervision is not proportional to the interests it is intended to protect. Supervision is generally extensive and detailed. This neatly summarises the micromanagement by the Custom House and the lack of discretion. In areas where local councils have been able to take a more active role, however, they have worked well, such as in local economic development, social inclusion and local policing through joint policing committees, although the role of councillors in that area, too, is now being diluted. We should also acknowledge the considerable role taken by local authorities during the pandemic in supporting small businesses and through the community call initiative, setting up local community response forums and helplines as well as working with the voluntary sector and mobilising local responses.

I am conscious the topic we are discussing is the future of local democracy and that much of what I have spoken about concerns what has been got wrong in the past. I will come to the Labour Party’s vision for the future of our local government system, but I acknowledge we as a party have not always got it right ourselves. My party colleague Deputy Howlin made a point in his contribution to a previous session that is worth reiterating. We were part of a Government that abolished town councils, our most local system of governance, in 2014. That was a mistake and it did not take us long to recognise that. We tried to rectify the issue through the introduction of the restoration of town councils Bill in 2018 but it has been languishing on Committee Stage in the Dáil ever since. I ask, as other colleagues have mentioned, that any future Government strongly consider this Bill on the restoration of town councils.

As for what local government should look like, it is clear from my previous remarks that we in the Labour Party believe the issue of devolution will be the key. We need to address the significant imbalance of power between the Executive and elected councillors. There is a democratic deficit in decision-making, which can only be dealt with by doing so. It is time we looked seriously at what functions and powers can and should be devolved to local councillors. Control over local investment projects, in areas such as housing, climate adaptation and transport, should, in the Labour Party's view, be devolved to the local level. Local authorities should hold responsibility for delivery in those areas, but it would also reduce the level of bureaucracy that holds up investment projects, such as those in the areas mentioned.

In the area of housing, we need local councils to be given a much greater role and stronger powers. The housing issue is the greatest challenge facing our country. I do not believe it can be solved without significant input and involvement from local authorities. We should be providing councillors with stronger powers to initiate and deliver housing and urban renewal projects. More capacity in improving and delivering transport services should be given in tandem. Local councils are already doing some fantastic work with the limited powers they have in respect of housing, but councillors constantly tell me that they want to do more. We should be expanding their remit rather than constraining it, as is currently envisioned in the Planning and Development Bill.

There are other areas that would be best served by affording greater power and autonomy at a local level too. I mentioned climate. Labour has proposed designating local authorities as energy authorities and giving them increased responsibility for addressing energy poverty, retrofitting and district heating.

There is also community development. This should be a core function of local government, with increased responsibility given to councils to allocate budgets, co-ordinate activity and pursue new initiatives, working with the community and voluntary sector.

On budgets and local government funding more generally, the financial independence of local councils must be strengthened. We encourage councillors to be responsible and to retain what they can raise with any new discretionary revenue-raising powers. Local government is funded from several sources. Of its current income in 2022, 40% came from government grants and subsidies, goods and services accounted for 25%, commercial rates for 28% and the local residential property tax for 7%.

On directly elected mayors, the establishment of the office in Limerick is a positive step, despite our frustration in the Labour Party regarding the relatively limited transfer of powers it received from the chief executive. We would like to see even more powers given to the new mayor. Nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction.

An Cathaoirleach

On behalf of People Before Profit-Solidarity, I call Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett. I thank him for being here.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the opportunity to speak on behalf of People Before Profit. Local authorities are chronically under-resourced and underfunded and are having their powers stripped away from them systematically and on an ongoing basis through underfunding, outsourcing and backdoor privatisation to the point where they are becoming increasingly irrelevant when it comes to doing the things that ordinary people in the areas they serve would expect them to do. That is producing a great deal of justified anger. Most of us would have been out canvassing recently. What are the issues that people are bringing up? Housing, most obviously. They look to the local authorities to provide them with housing. Their kids are on housing lists or are being thrown off those lists because they earn a little too much and there is nothing for them, but they cannot afford to live in their own localities. Housing maintenance takes forever or does not get done. The crews are understaffed and under-resourced. The maintenance of local estates is not looked after. Roads and paths are in a desperate state of repair. People who are in wheelchairs have significant problems navigating paths and roads because they are not properly maintained.

Local authorities used to look after waste. They no longer do so because waste collection was privatised. People pay a fortune for it. There are multiple providers. There is fly-tipping everywhere. The environmental situation has got worse since the privatisation of waste collection. Now, there is nobody to go to because there are only private waste operators, some of which are registered offshore in tax havens.

I speak to water workers about water services. They do not want to go to Uisce Éireann. They have all the knowledge about how to fix the leaks and so on and they do not want to work in water services anymore. Irish Water was a vehicle to try to privatise. The Government did not fully succeed in privatising, although, in reality, much of Irish Water's work is done by private contractors. The knowledge that we used to have in the local authorities has effectively disappeared.

I met the firefighters who were called in for the Stardust fire. The first thing they wanted to talk about was the lack of fire cover that we have and the potential for disasters like the Stardust to happen again because of the lack of resourcing for fire services. It is pretty incredible.

These are things that we are all aware of and that have been getting steadily worse. The forces that are doing this to local government have been accelerating. If this committee is serious about re-empowering local government, then it has quite a job on its hands. Essentially, we have to reverse the entire trajectory of what has been happening in local government and local services for the past 20 or 30 years. It starts with funding. In France, 40% of all public spending goes through local government. Here, the figure is 7%. That is a joke. Local government simply does not have the resources to do the things it is required to do.

We have the local property tax, which was a gimmick to pretend we were going to try to address the funding of local authorities by imposing a tax on people's family homes, which really just added to the sense of grievance that people had because, of course, the imposition of that tax did not lead to any additional funding whatsoever for local government. It never could, because the proportion of income that is provided by the local property tax is just 7%. Even if it was ratcheted up to levels that would be really annoying for people who are landed with this tax, it would never be possible make up the funding difference necessary to do all the things that local authorities need to do in the context of housing, housing maintenance and estate repairs.

Sports facilities is another area. People are crying out for football pitches. Now that women's sport has expanded, we need extra changing facilities for women and so on. There is a chronic deficit in all of these areas.

We have to start by demanding proper funding of local government. Let us do away with the pretence that the local property tax is a method to fund local government. Let us reverse the trend towards privatisation and outsourcing of council services. I do not know who mentioned recruiting apprentices and tradespeople. I was talking to maintenance workers in our Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown maintenance department when I was out canvassing the other day. They said they have about half of the tradespeople and general operatives they need to physically do the job. We need to recruit apprentices and tradespeople again. We need to take waste and water services back into municipal ownership. We should stop outsourcing housing to approved housing bodies, the Land Development Agency and so on, and actually give funding to local authorities to deliver social and affordable housing.

Deputy Seán Canney

I am delighted to be here representing the Regional Group of Independent TDs. I remember being elected to the council in 2004, which is 20 years ago now. I am getting old. At that time, when I got elected, I was excited by the thought that I was going to make a difference. I remember one of the things I was working on at the time was wastewater treatment plants in our towns and villages. At the time, Galway County Council had a list of projects to be done. We had feasibility studies on them, and then Irish Water arrived on the scene. That list has disappeared, and, 20 years later, the matter is still not on anybody's agenda. We have a housing crisis and local authorities will not allow us to build houses in villages because we do not have a municipal wastewater treatment plant, as decided by An Bord Pleanála in planning decisions. In my county, we have 30 villages frozen out of the planning system because we do not have a municipal wastewater treatment plant. That is the legacy Irish Water has given to Galway County Council. There is something wrong with that.

Turning to planning, there was a huge meeting in Portumna last night on a gas-fired generator plant that is going to be built there. The first meeting was last Thursday night. I was asked to go to it. There is an application with An Bord Pleanála for what we call strategic infrastructural development. Not one councillor on Galway County Council was made aware of that.

It was in there and the clock was clicking on submissions. The entire local authority representation is being bypassed. They are not getting a chance to discuss these them because they are now going directly into An Bord Pleanála. The planning regulator powers supersede everybody. When the planning regulator makes a comment on even a local area plan and makes a recommendation on it, if the council does not follow it, the Minister gives a direction that it has to be done. That has happened in the past number of weeks in Athenry where people are trying to build houses. We have this thing we call the core strategy in planning, which to me is BS because it means nothing. It is reducing the amount of land that is available to build houses on and it is making the development land more expensive. What do we do? We decide to bring in a residential zoned land tax and we are going to tax farmers who never want to zone the land for residential purposes because they are farming it. This is the grand idea we have but it is not coming from the local authority or the local authority members; it is coming from - I would not even say from central government - people who are appointed and who make decisions for the country without actually knowing damn all about what they are doing. I am very annoyed about all of that. The biggest problem we have in Galway County Council is funding. I am speaking to that because I know most about that particular county. Since I entered the Dáil, I have been trying to get from the Department the matrix by which the equalisation fund is managed and each local authority is funded by it. I hope the Ministers are listening to this. The Department has failed to give me that matrix. It is not transparent, nobody knows how it makes this up, and there has been political interference historically into what counties got in local government funding. I would like to see on everybody's manifesto that we would see a transparent matrix by which local authorities are funded. Galway County Council is one of the poorest counties in terms of funding per head of population. We have islands and a Gaeltacht and the county is the second largest in Ireland. The knock-on effect is that we have only four or five housing liaison officers in the county. Cork has something like 20.

Going back to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan's point about apprenticeships, one of the biggest things we have coming down the road is that we are building social housing out of face at the moment. That is great but there is not one dickybird about how we are going to finance the maintenance of this asset the State will own. What I mean by the way houses are being now, with the technology that is being put in for heating systems and whatever else and how that will be maintained and renewed. Who is thinking about and putting money aside to do that? The local authorities are expected to do that but they are not given the resources. Active travel is another classic example where the NTA has stopped funding the local authorities until they produce a plan for every town and village they want to put a footpath in. They have to go through a process of preparing this plan, do grandiose paperwork on it and the funding is not coming until all of that is done. Who is this for? Who is going to read it? The local councillors know what is needed in their towns and villages. They are the people who should be making the decisions and the money should flow to them but that is not happening. If we are making any manifesto proposals from this committee, we have to reset the dial on local government. We need to bring back town councils and make sure the councillor we elect has the power to make decisions because they are the people who know.

Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú

I thank Senator Mark Daly for the invite to speak on behalf of Sinn Féin. This is one of the few instances where we will get a huge level of agreement. We all know the history of local government and for the most part it has been very positive. I agree with the Minister of State in the sense that if we go back to 2014 and the changes that were made, such as the taking away from the town councils, a huge amount of that was really about austerity and cutting back resources in local authorities. In the likes of Drogheda Borough Council, Dundalk Town Council and even Ardee Town Council, decisions were made on the basis of what made sense in those urban areas and that is something that has definitely been lost. I was co-opted on 18 September 2017 and then elected to the council in 2019 so I did not spend a huge amount of time on it. However, I have been engaged with Sinn Féin for longer than I would like to or even can remember at this stage and I remember the great ideas I used to have for if I was a councillor. I always use the example of Councillor Kevin Meenan who was elected in 1999. He would tell me about what he could get done in 1999 as a town councillor in Dundalk compared to what he can get done as a county councillor with six other colleagues alongside him; it does not compare. This has been said if we are talking about housing and housing maintenance. You deal with the guys who deal specifically with this. They are generally trying their best but there is an element of robbing Peter to pay Paul just to get regular stuff done that was able to be done before. We look at the retrofit scheme as a means of dealing with the fact that people cannot get windows and doors replaced when they want to or need to. For a period, Louth County Council had a good history in respect of the retrofit scheme. I think 205 council houses were retrofitted last year but the target for this year is 145. Before this, we were able to take resources from other councils that did not have the capacity or whatever. However, again, that is some of that short-term thinking.

I have a particular issue in Louth County Council at the minute. We all talk about these pacts. Again, these are really about sharing out positions. The same Kevin Meenan as our group leader went to the other parties regarding operating the D'Hondt system and including everybody. I will be honest; it was thrown back in our faces. I could blame every councillor who agreed to go against what was open democracy but the fact is it was probably a small number of councillors. Everyone else has a responsibility for agreeing with it. I do not intend to make a major point about it but it is not necessarily best practice. However, we all know the real issue when talking about local authorities is that all the powers lies with the executive team and the chief executive. I am not saying they always make the wrong decisions but sometimes I wonder what councillors are there for outside of talking to themselves, occasionally releasing press releases and even at times having conversations regarding planning where they do not necessarily have any powers. The same goes for TDs. At this stage, a huge number of us hate when somebody comes to us with a planning application. That is not to take away from the planners and the work they do. None of us see that the planning Bill and the local development plans that have gone into place do anything other than remove any element of consistency and just leave everything open from a point of view of court cases being taken. Many planners talk about the fact that one part of a development plan or of the planning Bill contradicts another part. The only people who will like to see this are probably solicitors and barristers at some point and we will have more chaos in the planning system. The real problem is that people out there who are looking to get houses built, even one-off housing, are saying there is absolutely no consistency whatsoever.

There is no shortage to the issues we need to deal with. We need to look at the fact that we have a drop in turnout. We know there are issues around democracy in general that we need to deal with such as big tech, the cesspit that is social media and the way algorithms work. However, we really need to get down to providing real powers to local authorities again. We have a situation here, and I am hardly the first person to have said it, that the Dáil is the biggest city, town or county council in this State.

It is an absolute farce. I will also bring up an issue regarding Irish Water. The people of Dundalk are sending pictures showing the brown water coming out of their taps to me and to others. I realise that is down to a high level of manganese but we all know the difficulties councillors have when trying to engage on this. I have had decent enough engagement with Irish Water in the past while. Why is that? It is because I was able to bring the issue up on the floor of the Dáil. That is hardly the best way to deal with these issues. There are pilot projects ongoing with a view to delivering a solution to the manganese issue. We will only know at the end of the summer whether these projects have worked so we are talking about 2026 for a solution. I am fairly sure most county councillors in Louth County Council do not realise that so I am using this occasion to put it on the record.

I could go on for a considerable time but the big deal is the fact that local authorities have insufficient powers. We need to get real. What we are attempting to do in the Limerick mayoral project is a step in the right direction but we have a hell of a lot more work to do. There is no point in talking about this issue around the Houses if it does not actually go somewhere.

An Cathaoirleach

Before we go to members of the committee, I welcome Deputy Catherine Murphy, representing the Social Democrats.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation. Prior to my election to the Dáil in 2005, I had been a county councillor since 1991 and a town councillor since 1988. If Deputy Canney is feeling old, he can imagine how I am feeling. I have come to the very firm conclusion that there cannot be Oireachtas reform without local government reform. A piecemeal approach cannot be taken; the broad political spectrum has to be examined. Otherwise, all we will get are tweaks. Our political system is far too centralised. There it too much localism at the national level. There is a power imbalance in local government that makes it more akin to a system of local administration than one of local government. The Council of Europe was highly critical in its independent report last year. It found that “although Ireland is a solid democracy, it remains one of the most centralised countries in Europe” and noted that “there is still a lot to be done before local self-government in Ireland is on par with other European countries”. As a starting point in looking at local democracy, we have to accept that we do not have local government. If we start there, we will have a chance.

Like many of our institutions, our local government system was inherited and then modified rather than radically reformed. There was a deep suspicion of local government following the foundation of the State and that control element really set the scene for the future. The Green Paper produced during the term of the 2007-11 Government was remarkably candid about this even at that stage. It reached some major conclusions that were completely bypassed and that are well worth revisiting.

We must ask ourselves what we want local government to do. In the UK, Sir Michael Lyons was commissioned to do an independent review of the UK's local government system some years back. He concluded that "place-shaping", "the creative use of powers and influence to promote the general well-being of a community and its citizens" should be the primary purpose of local government. I totally agree with him on that. It is therefore not surprising that the level of the municipal district is where councillors feel they do the most meaningful work. What has been specified as the role of place-shaping is what is happening but we need to see that built on. Functions and funding must be expanded and there must be a greater level of discretion for councillors.

I was impressed by the new urban living project conducted by the sociology department of NUI Maynooth years ago. It studied four emerging suburbs and satellite towns. The study found that local residents' attachment to a place came down to four main factors: the built and natural environment, the cultural character of life in the area, the quality of informal and associational life and elective belonging, the reasons people have chosen to live where they do. This reinforces the point that place-shaping is key. People relate to where they have elected to live. In considering the structures of our local government system, we need to acknowledge that counties and cities have multiple identities. Senator Wall is present. We served on a council together and know that there is a world of difference between Athy and Leixlip. The functional areas are very different and have very different identities. It is exactly the same in cities, which are really a necklace of villages. Ballymun and Rathgar are worlds apart. They have different identities and those different identities can be focused on to a greater degree at the municipal district level. We are not good at institution building but we have built some very good institutions in a more informal way such as the GAA, the credit union movement and tidy towns associations, all of which allow for flexibility and creativity at local level. Their identities are not at the county level but at a sub-county level. That is one of the big points we need to take if looking at building local democracy.

People identify with counties even though they are not uniquely Irish. The country was shired between the 12th and 17th centuries as a measure of control. They are not the greatest means of local administration. In a reasonably modern context, the old Dublin County Council was broken up into three local authorities. In the North, local government is not administered by county. The sky does not fall in if local government is not based on counties. We need to realise that. The point I am making is that affiliation to place is really important.

We currently have a very little-known regional tier of local government. It is little-known because it is not directly elected. Balanced regional development is a national aspiration but we are relying on luck or goodwill to deliver it. We do not have a mechanism to deliver it. Let us imagine if we had a functioning tier of regional authorities that were directly elected, that had a range of functions and resources appropriate to them and that had input and responsibility as regards, for example, the delivery of the national development plan. It would also benefit from economies of scale. That could be transformative.

They are the two levels that will be most important if we are to build a real system of local government. When are we going to cut the umbilical cord? When are we going to stop this excessively centralised control that is holding us back? There is an old joke. A tourist arrives in Ireland and asks for directions. The answer is "Well sir, if you want to get there, I would not start from here." This is a real challenge. I could go on about the funding of local government. I have done a lot of work as to how the metric Deputy Canney referred to is worked out and must say that the more complicated you make something, the more you get away with. It really needs to be addressed but I was just looking at the structure.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the Deputy for giving of her vast levels of experience at all levels of government. I will call members of the committee. One of the issues that has come up is that people feel that the system is not working for them. It is not just an Irish problem. It is why people are supporting more extreme views as to who should run their countries. Whether in the hospitals, planning, people's circumstances of employment or transport, it is the job of governments to make systems work better but we are creating more red tape, more bureaucracy and the more complicated systems the members have outlined. Simple tasks like delivering housing now involve an over and back between Departments that costs more money and does not deliver.

Sometimes it is not about outcomes but about who is in charge. People are not concerned about the actual outcome, whether it be housing, planning, transport or health services. It is a concern for us all. I also thank Senator Cassells as rapporteur for the report. We will be sending everyone a copy and asking that they address this comprehensively in their manifestos, which will then be included in the programme for Government as a key part of reform of the way we deliver for our citizens.

Senator Frances Black

I thank everyone for coming to share their perspectives today. I have enjoyed and valued this opportunity to examine the state of our local democracy, and to hear from councillors across the island. Time and again we have heard from talented and committed people, who care so much about their communities. They are passionate but hamstrung in their efforts by flaws in the system. It is amazing to see how many passionate people there are. However, as we have heard a lot this morning, it is disheartening that they face such an uphill battle to be heard. These sessions have taken place alongside the latest local elections. This is underscored by the importance of this issue and the huge stakes it has for local communities. Parties and candidates who participate in these elections are hoping to change minds and make positive change. We saw a disturbingly low turnout in the last elections, which is maybe because people are more apathetic to local politics because the councils have been stripped of many of their powers and ability to provide public services.

I have a couple of questions. Some have said this already, but I also think it is time to give councils who want to re-municipalise services like waste collection the legal power to do that. Senator Higgins mentioned the idea of local property tax reform and the introduction of tourist tax. She did not have much time to elaborate on that, and I hope she might. Will she expand a little on the ways councils could review this in a progressive way? I also highlight the Planning and Development Bill, which will be debated in this Chamber today. It includes several measures that further undermine the power of councillors. It is strange to be discussing the empowerment of our local democracy in the morning when this Chamber will likely vote to undermine it in the afternoon, which Senator Boyhan often mentions. What can we do? Some have touched on it this morning. Will they give us some concrete ways to break this pattern of centralising power? I have spoken a lot about the violence, threats and harassment faced by councillors and election candidates. I noted that many of the people who faced the worst abuse have been re-elected into their communities, which indicates these hateful individuals are a minority. It is a nasty element of our political life that we need to confront, and in some rare cases abusive individuals who have acted in a questionable and objectionable manner have been elected alongside the individuals they have targeted. How do we ensure that councils are safe workplaces for everyone in this environment?

Senator Pat Casey

I welcome everybody. It has been interesting, but I do not think we learned anything new this morning, that we did not hear about already throughout our consultation process. We did not hear about any silver bullets to solidly fix the situation. There were snippets of some. The key problem with local government is its financing. Without financing you can have all the powers you like, but if you do not have the money to back it up there is not a whole lot you can do. The issues are the centralisation of powers and support for our councillors. The latter is an issue that needs immediate addressing, whether with regard to providing legal advice or with budgetary process. We need to provide more for them in those areas. I will hit on one or two specific points. Senator Higgins mentioned the county development plan. I agree that a fundamental role of the councillor is the adoption of the county development plan. I am split on the issue of six or ten years. I served three terms as a councillor. I was there for the adoption of three county development plans, but I only saw one through its complete process. When I was first elected in 2004, my first meeting was the adoption of the county development plan. Back then, we were landed with volumes of documents to read before we adopted it. The next one I was there from start to finish, and the last was across the election process again. The practicality on the ground is clearly not working either. I would love to see implementation of a county development plan, even if that implementation was a six-year implementation of a ten-year plan that was reviewed every so often.

I am afraid the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, is on a solo run today with regard to the town councils, as was his colleague, Deputy Phelan. There is clear evidence from every presentation we have, that while town councils needed reform they did not need to be abolished. Another thing that came up was the establishment of town teams. The way town teams are working is that they almost have more powers and access to the officials than the council members have. There are the PPNs and the LCDC. I was there for the creation of the LCDC, which was one of the most bureaucratic structures you could put together. I believe in local democracy. We need to do something. We cannot do that without the main parties and main people onboard. The research that the Library and Research Service did for us is a fantastic piece of work. I think the rapporteur will agree that we need to develop that and bring forward solid solutions that we can present to the leaders of all groupings. They will maybe then buy into that. I thank everybody for their presentations. I did not get to address every one of them. I give Phil Hogan good credit. He sold the LPT as a brand-new tax when it was only replacing existing funding. He did well on that one.

Senator Shane Cassells

I thank all of the Ministers, Deputies and Senators who have come today. Senator Kyne said he was first elected 20 years ago. Two weeks ago marked 25 years since I was elected in 1999 when I was still a young fella. I served 17 years in both town and county. It was an engaging and rewarding experience to serve. That is why I am so passionate about this process we are involved in. So far, in the work we have done during this year of hearings, we have heard from councillors, officials, civil society, PPNs, members from the North and today from Dáil and Seanad Members. It is important to hear views, and we are coming to the culmination of that, so we can get a good body of work. As Senator Casey has said, the work done by the Library and Research Service over the past months in terms of the examination of powers from 1992 to the present day has been hugely insightful. I encourage everyone in the Oireachtas to read it in the context of the rebalancing of powers across planning, housing, roads and the environment and the methodology of why that happened. That is also interesting. A number of aspects were raised by members today. A recurring theme has been the eradication of power at a granular level, which is the town councils. Having served on those for a number of years, I agree with that. The comments made by the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, go to the heart of it in the sense that urban spaces are unique. They are not just for the residents. They are shared spaces for those who live in the town, those who come into the town as visitors, and those who do business in the town.

They constitute a unique space that is not just the preserve of residents. We need to acknowledge that in the context of towns like Kilkenny, Drogheda and Sligo that had borough councils and a unique status, as well as growing towns like Navan. Removing them was a disservice to the general population and I would seek their restoration.

In terms of budgets and funding, an issue the library and research team delved into, and which we knew ourselves, was the receipt by local authorities of a number of funds across Departments, more than ever before. While much commentary in these sessions has been negative in tone, there are many positives. In my county of Meath, we have a spend this year in the revenue alone of €209 million; ten years ago, it was only €99 million. There are huge amounts of money and that does not include money coming in from groups like the NTA, where my town is getting in excess of €20 million for restoration of the town core.

Deputy Boyd Barrett said paths and roads were falling asunder and there was no money but that is not the case; there are huge amounts of money going into our towns. He mentioned sports funding. Last month it was announced there will be €250 million allocated for sports funding this summer. That is up €210 million in five years. The money is going into communities; it is about the strands through which it is going in. We have the idea that if it is not coming directly from local authorities, then it is not happening at community level. However, it is. Important in these discussions is examining the rebalancing and how to best deliver that. We had an examination of the system in the North and the point we are making is if you are seen only as an administrator of the fund, it affects turnout among the electorate. That is an interesting point we are examining.

I will finish on a light-hearted note. My colleague, Senator Boyhan, talked about pacts and tribalism. The Independents are getting a bit tribal as well. In Navan yesterday, they joined forces with Sinn Féin to keep Sinn Féin in for a third term in a row. The Senator's good friend Councillor Deane was involved. They even did business with the devils themselves, Fianna Fáil, just to keep their show for the gold chain.

Senator Mark Wall

I will not ask any questions but will make a couple of comments on what we heard today. I thank everybody for coming in. This has been an informative discussion.

Deputy Murphy mentioned regional assemblies. It is a serious issue as to where they fit in the future of local government. I would love an answer from the Ministers of State on where Government sees regional assemblies. The last day the regional assemblies were in, we discussed serious concerns about their funding and taking funding from local authorities. That issue has been there for a long time and needs to be examined. Regional assemblies have an important cross-Border and cross-county function but, unfortunately, the press they have got has been worrying for them.

On the great job our councillors do, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, made an important point on the reporting of council meetings and funding of it. My radio station, which Deputy Murphy will be familiar with, is Kfm. It gave every councillor a chance after a local authority meeting to outline footpaths, roads and whatever else, but that does not happen throughout the country. Through the elections of recent weeks, the one question was what a councillor does. There are a number of facets to that. People want to put their names forward because they think they can do a better job. We need reporting of what happens at local authority meetings. The Minister of State's idea around funding and supporting the press is important.

My colleague, Senator Casey, mentioned town teams. It works in certain places but I do not know who came up with the idea. It removes so many powers from those who put their name forward and are elected; people who are unelected seem to get many more powers. It is coming back from councillors across the political spectrum and the State that town teams are getting more powers than those who put their hands up to be elected. It needs to be addressed.

Senator Victor Boyhan

On a lighter note, I acknowledge many positive things are happening in local government. Let us be fair. Senator Cassells made a good point on the sourcing of the streams. Maybe that is an issue. Money is coming and it is coming with great announcements by Ministers. It is a valid point and I take it on board.

The recurring theme of these meetings has been empowering our city and county councillors. That is my focus here anyway. Three county development plans at different stages have passed through my hands. We will talk about that in greater detail this afternoon. I will not use this time to talk about it but, clearly, councillors of all groups feel pressurised and undermined with regard to the county development process and timescale. I will talk about that this afternoon.

The real issue is councillors are not lawyers, accountants or planners. They wish to have independent legal, financial and planning advice available to them when required. It is not always required. Most things are sorted out through the chief executive or law agent of the council but there are times when there is conflict and it is important we have a panel system of independent expert advice. We know of cases where councils have had to take litigation against their local authorities and their decisions have been confirmed. There are conflicts and that is an issue we need to look at. I am thinking of a mechanism for legal and financial advice that would be subject to resolution of the council; you cannot have everyone jumping up and down looking for advice on everything.

We need a statutory city and county planner who is not under the chief executive of a local authority but is parallel, and who makes decisions not at the behest of the chief executive of the council but based on proper planning and sustainable development. That would instil huge confidence in our elected councillors. Everyone wants to do the right thing and to improve the public realm and planning. They want citizens' engagement. We are all advocates and represent the citizens.

I ask the Ministers of State to take that one simple thought away today. They have it in Scotland. There is a model for it. It is a statutory county planner who sits parallel to, not below, the chief executive of the local authority and who makes decisions not out of political expedience or to suit someone's agenda, but to suit proper planning and sustainable development. I thank the Ministers of State and wish them well with their ongoing work in local government.

Deputy Alan Dillon

I thank members for their valued contributions. The importance of this session cannot be overstated and I look forward to the publication of the report into the future of local democracy and the recommendations that will stem from months of work. I acknowledge all the work the committee has undertaken over the past number of weeks. The arrangements for councillors to travel to Dublin have not been easy but it will be valued and I will take a deep dive into the considerations brought forward today.

I will respond to some points made on planning. It is an area of topical debate. The Planning and Development Bill is moving through the Houses and has passed the Stages in the Dáil. It is one of the largest pieces of legislation the Houses have seen. I think it is the third largest in the State's history. It will provide a clear, concise, transparent planning system.

We will have statutory timelines in respect of An Bord Pleanála, which is important if we are to try to reduce the backlog and ensure swifter decisions.

People need to understand that we implemented the Office of the Planning Regulator on the back of the Mahon tribunal on certain planning matters and the subsequent recommendations.

As Senator Boyhan stated, councillors are not planners, but they have a significant role in the review and implementation of local area and county development plans and we certainly require their input. They are the people on the ground who know the areas and they need to have a voice in this. Regarding current local area plans, how they are reviewed, how they become operational and the time periods involved, there is a two-year review process and a two-year implementation process and then the cycle starts again. Moving those out to a ten-year cycle makes sense from an implementation perspective. The current cycle is inadequate. It is cumbersome for many councillors to have to review plans every two to three years during a cycle. This is the reason for the change. We should be more focused on implementation of county development and local area plans.

The regional assemblies have an important function in the preparation of regional spatial economic strategies. Their advisory and consultative role with local authorities on the delivery of national policies is also important. We should strengthen regional assemblies. It is important that councillors who are on regional assemblies have a voice that is reflective of the chambers in their respective areas.

The question of finance is an issue. We have always had consideration for local councillors’ budgetary preparations. Local government is independent of central government and it prepares and commands annual budgets. We all know that the level of services within each local authority area is increasing, as is the level of demand. Deputy Canney referred to the record level of delivery under the social housing programme. We need to meet that level of maintenance in the time ahead. The LPT is one part of the mix. It has been called not fit for purpose, but it provides up to €696 million in local government funding, which is important. The Local Government Fund is another element. Senator Cassells spoke about other Departments. Partnerships with those Departments is central to this. The Department of Rural and Community Development allocates millions of euro to each local authority in respect of rural regeneration projects. In the Department of housing, where I sit, billions of euro are delivered to local authorities under the urban regeneration development fund. Departments are also allocating money to ensure that the local authorities have the technical and administrative personnel to administer the funds. All of this is forgotten about when we discuss a lack of funding for local government, though.

Senator Casey raised the issue of town councils. I wish to be constructive on this. There is a dual system in place at municipal and strategic county council levels, but I take the Senator’s point about urban areas. We have the town centre first policy, through which we should be directing more resources into making town centres more liveable and functional. Our Department needs to revisit that policy in terms of restrengthening the town focus and recalibrating powers within each urban area.

Deputy Malcolm Noonan

I will get everyone out the gap by 11 a.m. with a quick summary. I thank everyone for these fascinating contributions, including the summary by my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon.

Deputy Catherine Murphy referred to a directly elected tier of regional representatives. That should be explored, perhaps by An Coimisiún Toghcháin as a research piece. It would strengthen regional government and deliver balanced regional development and this committee should give consideration to that in its report.

I agree with all of the points made about a safe space for councillors, but also support for councillors in terms of secretarial office space and communication. As Deputies and Senators, we have all of those supports, but I recall going home after council meetings and sending emails at 11 p.m. There is very little support for the elected member. It is important that this matter be considered.

The issues relating to town and borough councils have been well exercised. There is definitely a majority opinion in this committee that the possibility of reinstating them needs to be considered, particularly the borough councils. I say that as someone who came from what was then the Kilkenny Borough Council, which was able to strike its own rate, had its own budgetary powers and had 12 elected members, who worked solely on an urban agenda.

I welcome Senator Cassells’s point about the positive force that local government is in our lives. I think of the small heritage grant schemes from my side of the Department, for example, the historic structures fund, the built heritage investment scheme and the monuments fund. Heritage officers across the country do amazing work with communities with these small grants, which are transforming people’s interest in heritage across Ireland.

Senator Wall spoke about reporting. That is something to which we need to give consideration. There is a deficit of reporting across the country by our local newspapers and radio stations. They do not have the resources to do it.

The issue of town teams largely emerged out of the town centre first policy. Their focus needs to be a collaborative one with elected members and they need to use elected members as a conduit for raising matters of improving urban areas in terms of dereliction, finishes and public spaces. If there is a feeling among councillors that the teams in some areas are getting about their station and going beyond their remit, town teams have a defined role and perhaps it needs to be redefined. Measures have been put in place under town centre first, for example, vacancy officers. Collaborating with communities on getting under the hood of the problem of why towns are not functioning as well as they should be is important.

I agree with Senator Boyhan’s point about independent expert advice for councillors.

I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, and his predecessors, the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donnell, and the Minister, Deputy Burke, in this Department. We have worked closely with them over the past four and a half years. While we have not got everything we wanted under the programme for Government in terms of local government reform, I feel encouraged by what is emerging from the process at this committee. The manifestos of the political parties should reflect that as well as the need for a fundamental reform of local government. After the next election, those parties that are in a position to form a Government should reflect that in their programme for Government. It needs to be ambitious. The challenges we face are immense, but the opportunities for local authorities are immense as well. We need to seize that opportunity and see meaningful reform in the next Dáil.

An Cathaoirleach

Next are Deputy McAuliffe and Senator Higgins.

Deputy Paul McAuliffe

I will be brief, as I appreciate that the Seanad needs to conduct its business.

I am willing to take back with me this discussion – Deputy Ó Murchú was right when he said there was considerable agreement – and the report, when it is published, and feed them into our party’s manifesto process. I have no doubt that I will be supported by my Seanad party colleagues.

There is a growing call for increasing the powers of local authority members. That is important, but with power comes the responsibility to make decisions, which was Senator Higgins’s point. This is about how we organise ourselves and make decisions.

I would have to push back a little against the suggestions of using D’Hondt and of everyone getting a turn in cathaoirleach position and so on.

This is not some sort of rotation of a privilege, it is the responsibility to pass a budget in a chamber. It is a responsibility to make the difficult decisions. One of the biggest things I find among retiring local authority members is the frustration that the council chamber is a debating chamber and not a decision-making chamber. To give a very brief example, in this debate, the majority of the parties that won the majority of the support in the Dáil received an 18-minute while the Opposition received a 48-minute allocation. That is nothing unusual to the Cathaoirleach. It happens every day in chambers right around the country and it happens every day in the Dáil as well. With increasing powers comes the responsibility to make decisions and that often involves people coming together, whether they are in a party or not, or are an independent or in a technical group or whatever. If involves making difficult decisions and that is the corollary to increasing the powers we have. The biggest example of that is that we all agree the city and county managers have too much power. Every councillor in every local authority around the country now has the ability to strip their chief executive of the powers and to invest them in a directly-elected person. One might not agree with that system but it is a far better system than the current one. Every single councillor in every local authority now has that power to trigger a plebiscite. The question is whether people will be willing to take that responsibility and go for it.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

I was asked about the hotel tax which, it is important to note, is different from a tourist tax. That was one example. An even more important example was the issue of the vacant and derelict sites tax. If that had been revenue that was coming directly to councils and that councils were able to ring-fence in order to reform and address dereliction that would have been very significant. Lessons should be learned in terms of the land value tax also. Those are revenue-raising issues but that is only one small part. The main part is around the increase in central funding. As was pointed out, with local property tax, effectively we saw a drop in central funding. I refer to central funding going to local authorities in terms of housing and administration matters. It is not simply about having money to do things, it is about how we do things. For example, during the recession local authorities were expressly banned from buying houses and instead forced to go with leasing arrangements that ended up costing more and they did not own the houses in the end. We see the consequences of a 20-year contract during which a house could have been sold four or five times. Those are examples. There were poor decisions around leasing. Services are being contracted out again and again instead of recruiting full maintenance teams like we used to have at local level. Local authorities are not able to hire people and give them a five, ten or 20 year contract with the council. In respect of maintenance and heritage work, people who can do that kind of environmental work will always be needed as will people who can work on water services. Why it matters that there is more funding is not about more money moving through the councils but that it is done in a way that allows councils to plan significantly.

With regard to planning, I had a litany issues that would have bored everybody but I can count at least 20 amendments we have tried to bring forward in the last few years that proposed small changes to Bills. The smallest thing was that if land was transferred, it might be with conditions. Maybe a condition would be that a playground would have to be built as well. Small things such as that were being taken away. I am really concerned that with the planning Bill, we will see this and an alienation from people. We talked about the town teams but we do not want a dynamic where we talk to the person who has an in with Government and start bypassing the idea of us making decisions collectively. Funding the town council is key. We must make sure we keep those powers of insight at planning level in terms of not just the development plan but that it is considered when decisions are being made. What we saw that in South Dublin County Council where it made a really wise decision to ban data centres. The overturning of that decision sent an incredibly poor message to the public who had elected those councillors. That is an example of seeing central government overriding in that regard.

Participative budgeting would be wonderful but it cannot just be with the crumbs. We see a budget of €100,000 being debated when the spend of €20 million is going through the council. There needs to be something more.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

II will pick up on a point Senator Casey made about the implementation of county development plans. That implementation cannot be divorced from other policies set out elsewhere, for example, strategic housing developments completely bypassing county development plans where things such as the need for schools and other infrastructure, which are about building communities, are measured. We then have deficits. For example, looking at a region, in 1996 Dublin city accounted for 13% of the national population. It now has a bigger population but accounts for 11%. If we start looking at the outer counties, they have grown from 9% to 13%. In fact the three outer counties of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow exceed the population of Dublin city now. What we have not done is get that land use and transportation planning piece done correctly and there is extra pressure and the spending is being doubled.

The recent review of the baselines of the local property tax has been infuriating for areas that have been growing in population because the way it was redone almost made no difference if the population had grown. The benefit was given to areas in terms of the geographic size of the county as opposed to its population. It puts counties that are growing rapidly at a gigantic disadvantage. It will spread things to breaking point and in some places they are at breaking point at this stage in terms of the level of discretionary spending.

An Cathaoirleach

I will give the last word to our rapporteur.

Senator Shane Cassells

I thank everybody. This meeting has been extremely informative and no more needs to be said.

On a point of information with regard to a point raised by the Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, and by Senator Wall in respect of the correlation between local news media and local democracy. I absolutely agree as someone who was a journalist and is still a member of the NUJ. We discussed this matter at the Oireachtas joint committee on media with the executive chairperson of Coimisiún na Meán, Jeremy Godfrey, because we were discussing misinformation, disinformation and the rise of it. I refer to a news desert. This has happened in the UK and one only has to look at the Grenfell Tower tragedy where the local media outlet in that area had closed down and decisions were made by the local council in respect of cladding in that area that were never covered because there was no local media outlet there. There is the correlation between local reporting and local democracy. We were discussing it yesterday with Coimisiún na Meán, An Garda Síochána and the State's watchdog. In respect of that, the €6 million fund for the local democracy and court reporting scheme, which was announced by the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, in the budget has now become operational through Coimisiún na Meán, so it is there for local media organisations to access and fund projects.

My old boss from the Drogheda Independent, which I worked in 30 years ago, is now 80 years of age and is the court reporter for the Meath Chronicle. When that man finishes, we might not have a court reporter. The coroner's court, the local court or the local council will not be reported on. There is a deficit there, so I hope the €6 million fund will have an impact. Here is the rub. There needs to be a newspaper in existence for things to be covered but we unfortunately might follow the UK and several media outlets in this country may close. There is a duty and responsibility on the public to value what they have because if those institutions close, it will lead to, in some cases, more than 150 years of reporting of local community activity being gone and that will never come back. That is something worth taking into consideration as well.

Senator Alice-Mary Higgins

There are some new outlets such as the Dublin Inquirer which is a really positive example of something new happening in that regard.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the rapporteur and members of the committee and especially our guests, who attended and gave of their experience of local government and the interaction with national Government, and Ministers who gave their time. All of the political parties and groupings within Leinster House were invited to participate in the Seanad public consultation on the future of local democracy. We look forward to attendees talking to their parties and groupings about having an element of this matter in their manifestos, so that it will be in future programmes for Government and that it will ensure the strengthening of our democracy at local and national levels.

The joint committee adjourned at 11.10 a.m. sine die.

Seanad Public Consultation Committee debate - Thursday, 27 Jun 2024

The Future of Local Democracy: Discussion (Resumed)

Seanad Public Consultation Committee debate -
Thursday, 27 Jun 2024