I wish to put a few points directly to the delegation now that members have covered a lot of ground. The Green Paper on resourcing the planning system has come from the Department. Does that feed into financing local authorities? The delegation might elaborate on that.
There seems to be an inherent negative attitude to the county structure. Mr. Dowling's opening statement stated, "it also notes the loyalties to county boundaries and the absence of any consensus as to how a more rational tier of sub-county local government could be introduced", as if to say that we are a little bit irrational at the moment. That tone is coming through. Counties are different. There are counties with populations of hundreds of thousands, while others have populations of 50,000 or 70,000 people. One does not need the myriad of sub-county structures if one has a relatively small county like my own where no place is more than 20 minutes from county. One size does not fit all.
The Green Paper places heavy emphasis on the mayor but is a bit condescending to every other elected member of the council. I will give two examples. Page 60 talks about discretionary decisions on funding. It states:
Consideration could be given to providing further discretion to councillors on day-to-day matters - for example, allowing discretion for expenditure on minor environmental works, etc., without undermining the impartial function of the manager. Any such discretionary decision making must still comply with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act for public bodies to give reasons for decisions, and for decisions to be taken in a fair manner.
The first part of the first sentence sounds good but the rest of it, which refers to "minor environmental works" is belittling. The Green Paper then includes a statement that it must be done in an impartial manner, which implies that it does not believe councillors would do so. It goes on to state that councillors will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act in the event that they are allowed to make minor decisions.
Page 80 of the Green Paper refers to the forms of participative democracy. It states:
Participatory budgeting is a fiscal decision-making mechanism which devolves power to ordinary residents, who decide how to allocate an element or proportion of a local authority's budget. Residents may identify spending priorities, elect delegates to represent different communities on local authority budgeting committees, and initiate local community projects.
There is a suggestion in the Green Paper that residents, who have no elected mandate, will be given serious power. However, woe betide a councillor who might have discretion. In the effort to promote the mayor, there is a tone running through the document that belittles the other members of the council.
To return to a point I made earlier about county boundaries, page 111 of the document talks about local government administrative boundaries. It states, "the success of the county as an expression of Irish local identity has resulted in proposals to alter county administrative boundaries being politically divisive, highly emotive, and difficult to resolve". The tone implies that people who want to hold on to county boundaries are almost a difficulty getting in the Department's way in resolving how somebody else should function. There is a lack of understanding of the psyche. Everything the delegation talked about related to the identification of the citizen with the local authority. This is meaningless if one starts breaking it up into anonymous components. Even in the European Parliament, we have an area covering the east of the country. I do not even know the name of the constituency. The Department will take away the link of the people if it takes away an identifiable aspect about which everybody can talk.
The delegation referred to plebiscites. I ask it to forward to the committee the turnout in local authority elections because it would be very helpful in respect of this debate. I am sure the franchise section in the Department has this information. We know that the turnout is not nearly as high as the turnout in a general election. The Department now wants sub-county elections and plebiscites. The people want to elect us and for us to get on with it. They do not want to be bothered. We see this at the moment. They think it is our job to do these things. We can overdo this call for local democracy. If they are asked to vote many more times at local level, the turnout will be minuscule.
To put a counterpoint to some of the members here, the Oireachtas meetings with local authorities work outstandingly well in my constituency. We meet on a Friday every September. Six months later, by agreement, we get an update from that meeting from the county manager. If the council members have any objection, it is that we get a far better quality of information twice a year than they do. We end up telling them what is happening and what the manager said and is proposing. I have seen several of them. The Cathaoirleach of the council learns more by attending our briefing than he does at all his monthly meetings.
I advise the Members of the Oireachtas to get together and tell the manager what to do. Feedback goes back. We know some counties do not do it well, although others do a good job. I know some managers have told other managers what to do, such as having a snappy and good-quality presentation that tells people what is going on. It works very well in our area.
There is some basis for taking powers from councillors. Councillors had the authority to pass waste management plans a number of years ago and perhaps some counties were not supportive of that and of Government policy. They might have been controlled by parties that were not in Government and for the sake of pigheadedness, decided not to do it. We had to bring in legislation to even get some waste management plans passed because, in some case, local authorities would not do it.
I am very much in favour of the EPA. In my county, the biggest polluter is the local authority through most of the sewerage schemes, as is the case in most counties. I would not trust the local authority to monitor itself and I thank God that the EPA can tell the local authority what or what not to do in respect of the landfills we have in Laois. I am probably running counter to the views of the majority of the members here but I have seen the other side of the situation where local authorities simply fob one off. If one can call in the EPA then, all of a sudden, the local authority will act. It is a bit like the Ombudsman. We have all made representations. If one refers a case to the Ombudsman, the council officials can well change their minds so there needs to be oversight from that point of view.
One of the weaknesses for local councillors is the practice that has developed in most local authorities of changing the Cathaoirleach each year. No sooner have they become familiar with the process than they are changed and the manager knows it. If a Cathaoirleach is in place for a couple of years, by the second year they know the process, how to handle development plans and estimates and are wise to the manager. It is God's gift to the county manager to have a new Cathaoirleach every time an estimates meeting takes place because it is the Cathaoirleach's first and last time chairing such a meeting.
Removing Members of the Oireachtas from the local authorities has given much more power in practice to the county manager. The likes of us who have additional information are always in a position to challenge a manager on the floor of a council chamber whereas the ordinary elected councillor, who does not have access to the information we have, does not have the same ability because he or she does not have the level of knowledge we can pick up here.
Could the delegation respond to my question about voter turnout? I am curious to see how fond people are at local level of voting for local things. They are not as keen to get into plebiscites as we think. Do members of the delegation have any comments on this? I did not like the tone of some of the material I quoted. I accept that it is all part of a discussion process and that this is not the final word.