In case Deputy O'Shea was not aware of it, in 1985 I was a member of the Fianna Fáil Party but I resigned from that party in January 1986. It is a fair old stretch of the imagination to seek to tie the Progressive Democrats Party to a document which was Fianna Fáil Party policy in 1985. The fact that I resigned surely had some significance which seems to have escaped Deputy O'Shea. The commitments contained in that Fianna Fáil policy document of 1985 before the elections did contain some specifics. In fairness to the Fianna Fáil Party they did not come into Government until March 1987. The party of which he is a Member today was then in Government and took no steps to implement the items with which he seems to agree now but did not agree with when his party were in office.
It is no harm to remind this House that it was the Labour Party Minister for the Environment who changed the legislation which caused havoc in the financing of local authorities. One would not imagine that one would have to give a short summary of recent history to remind Members of this House of the sequence of events. The rates were abolished by the Fianna Fáil Government with a statutory obligation to replace the sum of money lost to each local authority by way of a statutory grant equivalent to the amount they would have received from housing rates. That was the position. Local authorities were able to operate fairly satisfactorily under that system, but when the Labour Party came into office and Deputy Spring, their leader now, became Minister for the Environment he chose to introduce, with his colleagues in Fine Gael, a change in the law which removed the statutory obligation on the Government to fund local authorities with an amount equivalent to what would have been the revenue from rates on houses. An arbitrary system ensued whereby the Fine Gael Minister for the Environment could then decide how much money they would give to local authorities. They told them in the same breath that they must introduce service charges to make up for the cutback, which nowadays is a popular cant from the Labour Party, The Workers' Party and even Fine Gael. It was they who introduced this whole change and upset the system which had been working reasonably successfully. Local authorities have suffered drastically since then as a result of the legislation introduced by the Labour Party. I would like to draw this to the attention of Deputy O'Shea, who was not a Member of this House at the time but who supported the Labour Party. He was so satisfied with the policies the Labour Party followed in Government that he stood for election because he wanted to see that party back in Government again so that they could put their policies into operation.
I cannot answer for Fianna Fáil as to why they did not fulfil the commitments that were made in the 1985 policy document for the local elections. Fianna Fáil came into office in 1987 and were in office until 1989. During this time I sat in the Opposition benches as a member of the Progressive Democrats. However, since the Progressive Democrats came into office as part of this Government, which we did in July 1989, we have certainly taken steps to have the mess at local government tackled in regard to structures, powers, functions and, of course, finance, which seems to be so easily overlooked by some of the Deputies in the Opposition parties and indeed by media commentators.
A very important study is being undertaken at present in regard to how local authorities are to be funded in the future. A formula for an equalisation grant is being devised at present by a group of experts at the behest of the Barrington committee. The preliminary report was published and made available to Members of the House and an extensive study is now under way. This fundamental study will have a dramatic effect on the way in which future rates support grants are allocated. A successful formula may be devised and the Government may decide to implement it, but the studies to enable such a decision to be arrived at are under way and that is a very major step.
I do not accept any criticism from people in the Labour Party or in the Fine Gael Party about what has happened in local government. I have been one of those people who have constantly spoken out about the damage being done to local government and about the need for change and the fact that the whole system was antiquated. The system has been in place since the last century. Government after Government of the parties that have been in Government over the past 30 years have failed ignominiously to tackle this problem in a meaningful way. This Bill is the first step that has been taken to do anything meaningful about local government. It is important that I should say that, because this reforming legislation is a first step in what hopefully will be an overall package of local government reform, which my party see as essential to making local government truly local, truly efficient and truly cost effective.
The present Bill is largely an enabling Bill to transfer power from central Government to a reconstructed local government system. It also introduces some important innovations agreed between the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil in our joint deliberations on this very important issue. However, it is only with the addition of further legislation, particularly to provide sub-county local government structures, and the extensive use of the enabling powers in the Bill that we will see the present reform programme begin to realise its overall target.
For that sub-county structure the Progressive Democrats are advocating the creation of a network of 150 directly elected district councils, covering the entire country, and making no distinction between urban and rural areas, as is made at present. These new district councils will include urban and rural areas alike and are designed to deliver a whole range of local services, such as refuse collection, litter control, road repairs, traffic control, maintenance of local amenities such as parks, beaches and open spaces and also maintaining infrastructural services for health, safety and employment purposes and providing a local community input into matters like education and policing. Indeed, the whole range of services provided through the different Government Departments should be looked at to see what functions could more effectively and efficiently be administered at a lower tier in the Government structure. There should also be an extensive tier of local government below county level.
Among the important measures which this first-phase Local Government Bill now before us provides for are: the creation of three separate county councils to cover the greater Dublin area and to get away from the present unwieldy 78 member county council structure; the establishment of eight regional authorities to co-ordinate major regional development projects; to give local authorities a general competence and to abolish the ultra vires rule thereby enabling local authorities to pursue development and employment activities in the interests of local communities; the establishment of independent boundary committees to make recommendations on any changes in county, urban or any other local authority area, including local electoral boundaries, and to provide that any such change must be formally approved by a majority vote in the Dáil and Seanad. If necessary, an amendment will be introduced to copperfasten this aspect of the Bill in case there is any doubt about it.
We are also introducing major restrictions on the use of the section 4 provisions in planning matters so that local authorities will in future require a majority of 75 per cent of their full membership to support any such resolution and also the support of 75 per cent of the councillors elected in the area in which the development is proposed. This 75 per cent voting requirement will apply also in the case of material contravention motions. We are providing local authorities with greater discretion in spending the block grants allocated by central Government under each programme, for example housing, roads etc. Councillors will have a new discretion to determine their priorities for spending the block grants. That is a very fundamental change but it seems to have escaped the notice of the commentators and the Deputies who have contributed to the debate so far. We are providing that in future city and county managers will be appointed for a fixed term of seven years. We are also providing statutory controls on the payment of expenses to councillors for travel at home and abroad. That is a brief summary of some of the main points provided for in this Bill.
The contents of the Bill are derived primarily from the terms of reference agreed by the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil in Government just over a year ago. On 5 April last year the Government announced the appointment of a Cabinet sub-committee, with representatives of both parties in Government, to draw up proposals for the reform of local government and to look at the question of structures, functions, financing and related matters. The Cabinet sub-committee in turn appointed a specialist committee of nine people, chaired by Mr. Tom Barrington, former director of the Institute of Public Administration. Their final report was received by the Government towards the end of last year, in December, and a second detailed report on financial aspects of local government funding is still awaited from the London Institute of Fiscal Studies.
At this juncture I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Mr. Tom Barrington and to each and every member of his committee for the tremendous work they have done in reviewing our whole local government system in the very short time span allocated to them. As the Progressive Democrats made clear at the time of the publication of the report, our party warmly endorse the overall findings of this expert body.
The form of this legislation follows closely the recommendations of the Barrington committee, which said in paragraph 11.4 that:
This legislation should set out the broad Local Government framework and allow for necessary consequential changes to be implemented by way of statutory order. This would provide the legal flexibility and adaptability to proceed quickly on an ongoing basis.
This is what the Government are proposing by means of this legislation. We intend to radically reform the operation of local government here and to achieve this we need a solid legislative framework followed by ongoing implementation of the reforms.
The Barrington committee recognised that it would be almost impossible to achieve meaningful reform of local government in a reasonable timeframe through primary legislation alone. The solution proposed, and adopted by the Government, which the Progressive Democrats support fully, is to provide legislation to broaden the ambit of local authorities and provide for a speedy and streamlined devolution of powers from the centre to local authorities, to be achieved by a combination of administrative reform and statutory instruments.
A central aspect of this framework legislation is the relaxation of the ultra vires doctrine and the conferring of a general competence on local authorities. That was suggested by the expert committee in paragraphs 8.1 and 8.2 of their report and is presented here in sections 5 and 6 of the Bill which to my mind are probably the most significant sections of it. Section 6 is certainly of enormous importance. It will enable local authorities to engage in a wide range of issues enabling them to play a more active and relevant role in the lives of their communities.
The expert committee also recommended that greater autonomy be provided to local authorities in the allocation of resources. Section 8 (4) provides for a significant degree of new autonomy to be given to local authorities.
A central consideration of the Government in the reform of local government was the need to have elections this year to enable our people to exercise their franchise. The expert committee recognised and recommended the holding of elections for city and county authorities in June, subsequent to the introduction of this legislation. The committee recognised the immediate need to reform the structures in the Dublin area, and Part IV of the Bill give substance to the recommendations of the expert committee in that regard.
Part IV provides for the setting up of area committees covering the county of Dublin, excluding that part of the city governed by the corporation. The three area committees, Fingal, South Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown will, eventually, become full county authorities. That will replace the shambles that exists at present, a remnant of the flawed centralist policies of the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition, who left office in 1987 and left us with a 78 councillor Dublin County Council, nearly half the size of Dáil Éireann, but which has proved to be ineffective and very remote from the people it is supposed to represent.
The committee also recommended in paragraph 5.2.3 of their report the setting up of a boundary review group and a new legislative framework for boundary change. The committee stressed the need for "a new, modern, simpler and flexible statutory framework in place of the current variety of outdated provisions". These recommendations are taken on board in Part V.
Local authorities will be able to initiate boundary revisions, thereby facilitating a bottom-up approach to local government reform. The report of the independent boundary committees will be published to ensure a full and proper disclosure of their recommendations. Finally, any changes proposed by the Minister for the Environment will be subject to the confirmation of both Houses of the Oireachtas before they can have effect.
When I listened to the Fine Gael spokesman on these matters I wondered whether he had read the Bill, whether he understood it was being mischievious, was being reactionary, and whether he wanted any change, reform, or improvement. It is very difficult to understand how a Bill written in simple and plain English could lead the Deputy to his extraordinary conclusions about the so-called gerrymander of electoral areas. It is particularly difficult to understand the position when one recalls the record of the Deputy's party in regard to gerrymandering, not only of Dáil constituency boundaries which is well known from the time of the Tully gerrymander, the most blatant gerrymander of constituencies ever implemented here — but also of local authority electoral areas. There are many examples of the Fine Gael and Labour parties in Government changing boundaries to seek to obtain electoral advantage for their party candidates. Some disgraceful things have been done by those parties. In that regard, Deputy Mitchell made an extraordinary allegation that this Bill facilitated the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. In fact, the Bill is changing the system that those parties abused and ensuring that such abuse cannot be undertaken in the future. It is doing that by insisting that an independent boundary committee will study the matter and publish a report so that there will be full transparency and that the public will be able to read the proposals. Changes proposed for implementation by the Minister following on the recommendations from such an independent committee will have to come before the House by way of an order. So much for the outlandish and inaccurate allegations made by Deputy Mitchell.
The Bill is a proper response to the need to provide a simple, flexible, statutory framework as suggested by the Barrington committee. It has adequate safeguards to meet the fears of even the most sceptical of Deputies, consistent with the need to respond to the real needs of local government.
Section 13 disqualifies Ministers of Government and Ministers of State from membership of local authorities. We will also need to keep the general issue of parallel membership of various governmental tiers under review, particularly when the issue of subcounty structures is determined. Indeed, my party's policy preference is for local government to be confined to non-Oireachtas Members, but we recognise that it would be foolish for us to adopt that course unilaterally.
Section 43 provides for the establishment of regional authorities. That again is in keeping with the recommendations of the expert committee in paragraph 5.1.8. It provides for the setting up of definitive administrative regions abroad which public bodies will be expected to organise. This layer of Government will operate mainly on a basis of co-ordinating public services in their regions.
While this section provides for the setting up of statutory regional authorities we will need to see a parallel commitment by public bodies to reorganise their structures and systems of decision-making to reflect this new tier of Government, rather than have the anomalous situation that pertains at present where a variety of regional authorities are established and carry out important functions with very few of them having the same boundaries. There is need for rationalisation to establish once and for all the regions and the regional authorities across all of the services that are provided and organised.
Part VII implements several recommendations of the expert committee. Section 42 provides for allowances for chairpersons of local authorities, section 47 limits the tenure of office of county and city managers. Section 48 provides a statutory basis for the conferring of civic honours and section 49 provides for the twinning of local authorities. Section 50 places a statutory obligation on each local authority to produce an annual report of their activities so that the public may have full access to knowledge of the way in which their money is being spent. Section 51 provides a basis on which attendance at conferences by councillors, especially overseas events, can be determined. We are all aware of the highly publicised cases of local councillors attending conferences abroad at which the subject matter under discussion was very remote from the particular councillor's area of responsibility. This section should help to prevent bringing into disrepute the legitimate participation of councillors at conferences abroad.
The expert committee also addressed the issue of section 4 planning appeals and recommended that section 4 motions should no longer apply to decisions on planning applications. The Progressive Democrats agree with this recommendation because there already exists an appeal process vested in An Bord Pleanála. We do not support the wanton disregard for the planning system exercised by some councillors in the past and even up to recent times. Neither do we want to see the issue of local government brought into disrepute by such irresponsible action. The Government decision does not involve the complete abolition of section 4 in planning matters. However, sections 44 and 45 of this legislation provide for substantial controls over this abuse by requiring such motions to have the support of 75 per cent of the members of the local authority along with the requirement that the motion be signed by 75 per cent of those councillors in whose area the planning appeal lies. As I have said already, this voting requirement would also apply in the case of material contraventions.
We believe that these steps were necessary, unfortunately, because of the very clear abuse being undertaken by some councillors. All councils and all councillors were being tarnished because of the actions of a small number. I hope that when this Bill is passed we will see an end to that practice, except in exceptional cases. It is very regrettable that it has become the norm in some authorities that when a person makes a planning application he does not even wait for the decision of the planning authority but approaches three councillors and gets them to sign a motion which is put in before the application can be decided by the manager. The manager is directed to grant planning permission by three people, who in many cases may have never seen the site, are not aware of the detail of the application and have no expert or technical knowledge of the various aspects of such applications. Yet they are confidently prepared to put their names to section 4 motions. They then stubbornly argue for them against the advice of the manager, the chief planning officer, the county engineer and the health boards, who have an important role to play in regard to the disposal of sewage effluent in these planning application cases. I have seen this happen time and again. This is one of the areas where some councillors have abused the system and it was time for Dáil Éireann to act.
I am very proud that it was the Progressive Democrats who highlighted this abuse and called for change. I am very pleased that the Barrington report fully supported the approach we had taken publicly in that matter. I am satisfied to support the 75 per cent requirement in the hope that it will deal with the difficulty. If it does not, we will keep the matter under review and see how it progresses. To hold a special meeting once a month to deal with practically nothing else but section 4 motions is a serious abuse. It means that a lot of expense is incurred, with all officials having to be present and some councillors having to travel many miles for the meeting. That procedure has to be gone through to put through these motions. I am complaining only about the cases where due consideration is not given prior to signing the motions. As happens in Galway, the manager takes legal advice and refuses to implement the direction given under the section 4 motion.
It is quite obvious from a summary of the various provisions in this first Local Government Reform Bill that it represents a very significant step forward from the present status quo. For that reason alone the persistent and misleading remarks of the Fine Gael spokesman, Deputy Mitchell, some of which were given even before the Bill was published, were irresponsible, absurd and even reactionary. This is even more so when it is borne in mind that the Progressive Democrats sought to ensure all-party involvement in local government reform. In the Programme for Government negotiated in July 1989 it was agreed between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats that an all-party committee of this House would be established with the task of carrying out a major review of the local government system and coming forward with agreed proposals for change. The Fine Gael Party declined to participate in this exercise and prevaricated for so long that valuable time was lost which in the end necessitated the postponement of the local elections last year.
Deputy Mitchell's comments lack credibility when one considers the poor record of Fine Gael in this area of reform. They also lack credibility because his comments bear no relationship to what is in the Bill. It seems that he spoke before he knew or understood what was in the Bill. His contribution to the debate has failed to substantiate his claim that the Minister was taking unto himself draconian powers. His claims in particular relating to the Bill's proposals on revising local government boundaries are totally perverse and incorrect. Until this legislation was introduced the fixing of local government boundaries was exclusively the preserve of the Minister for the Environment of the day, and the last Government of which Deputy Mitchell was a Minister utilised this power to the full in the run-up to the last local elections in 1985.
Deputy Mitchell has also done a great deal of huffing and puffing about the amount of time allocated for debate on this Bill. Here also he stands guilty of downright hypocrisy. I would like to remind this House, and especially the Fine Gael and Labour parties, that the last time the Dáil debated local government reform was under the Local Government (Reorganisation) Bill, 1985, prior to the last round of local elections. While that Bill was a shambles, and its limted measures were not even subsequently enacted, the fact is that the total time allocated then for the Second Stage debate was a paltry six and a half hours. This week a total of 26 hours had been allocated for the Second Stage of the Bill before the House. Furthermore, less than 11 hours were allocated for all Stages of the Fine Gael-Labour Bill in the Dáil in 1985. That exposes the sham and humbug of Deputy Mitchell and Fine Gael. Their stance is one of pure desperation.