Seanad Public Consultation Committee díospóireacht -
Thursday, 25 Apr 2024

The Future of Local Democracy: Discussion (Resumed)

An Cathaoirleach

I welcome our contributors from Dublin city and county for this Seanad public consultation on the future of local democracy as we run in to the local elections this year, which will see the largest number of people voting in the history of humanity. Needless to say, democracy faces countless challenges. With this report, we are hoping to look at those challenges and to hear of your personal experiences and the solutions to the ongoing difficulties that local democracy, but also democracy itself, face.

We are joined by public representatives and, this afternoon, members of the public will appear. We had contributions from local authority members' associations from the Republic and Northern Ireland at the previous sessions relating to the European Parliament electoral areas of Ireland South and the Midlands-North-West. This meeting is for the Dublin constituency for the European Parliament elections.

As part of the first session, we are delighted to have present the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Daithí de Róiste; the leas-chathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Ms Eva Dowling; the mayor of Fingal County Council, Mr. Adrian Henchy; the mayor of South Dublin County Council, Mr. Alan Edge; and other public representatives. I am also delighted to be joined my committee colleagues. As rapporteur to the committee, Senator Cassels will make a few remarks. Also present are Senators Casey, Black, Wall, Boyhan and Joe O'Reilly. I am delighted to welcome you all. I will call witnesses in turn, in alphabetical order of their county or constituency area.

Before I begin, I must attend to a procedural matter that is read out at the start of all meetings. I remind witnesses of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks.

It is imperative that they comply with any such direction. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I now invite Senator Cassells, rapporteur to the committee, to make some brief remarks.

Senator Shane Cassells

It is my pleasure as rapporteur of the committee to welcome everyone. I and my fellow members of the Seanad Public Consultation Committee team have had an extensive journey in the process we have gone through, listening to the voices of councillor representative groups, councillors themselves and other statutory bodies over several months. However, it is only fitting, as we come towards the end, that we listen to the voices of the capital city and county. There is a unique aspect to the running of Dublin city and county and that deserves a special process. As we move forward into the local elections process and the debates about local governance, particularly in the city and county, the insights from the witnesses who are at the coalface of that will be hugely insightful and will form a major part of this report.

I extend a warm welcome to the Lord Mayor, cathaoirligh and councillors and look forward to this morning's session.

An Cathaoirleach

Before I call on the Lord Mayor of Dublin, I will reflect on the events at the weekend where there was a protest at a Minister's house. That is not protest. It is intimidation. That is what it is designed for. It is what it is meant to do. It is meant to intimidate not only, in this case, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, but it has happened previously, including to some people in this room. Democracies are dying because they allow people a platform to attack them. Democracy needs to defend itself. While it is perfectly legitimate and important that people can participate in public protest, it is beyond time for the Department of Justice and the Minister at that Department to bring in legislation to prevent and make it unlawful to protest outside the private residences of elected representatives, officials and people who work on behalf of the State. How that can be done in a way that does not undermine democracy is important, but by allowing intimidation, we are allowing the undermining of democracy itself. We cannot allow that to continue. That is one of the things that has come out of previous discussions. It is important that we do not allow business as usual by saying it is a form of democratic protest. It is not democratic protest when people are wearing balaclavas outside the private residence of someone who is giving service to the State. Rather, it is designed to deter people from running for public office, and it will have that effect. That undermines democracy and we cannot allow it to continue.

I call on my good friend and colleague, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Daithí de Róiste.

Mr. Daithí de Róiste

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. Ar dtús báire, gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste as ucht an deis a bheith os a chomhair. Tá sé fíorthábhachtach go bhfuilimid ag caint faoi thodhchaí an daonlathais, go háirithe sa chathair seo.

As the 355th Lord Mayor of Dublin, it is both an honour and privilege to be here to address this gathering on the future of local democracy. As I stand here, I am conscious as we talk about the future that I represent a position which has been in place as mayor since 1229 and Lord Mayor since 1665. Local democracy lies at the heart of our democratic system and serves as a bedrock on which our communities are built and people's voices are heard. It is within the chambers of our local councils that the concerns and aspirations of our constituents find expression. It is where decisions are made that have a direct impact on the lives of those we serve in communities and, from our perspective, that is communities across Dublin. The future of local democracy hinges upon our collective commitment to fostering greater transparency, inclusivity and engagement with local government structures. We must strive to create environments where all voices are valued, diversity is embraced and decision-making processes are accessible and accountable to the communities they serve. We have moved away from that in recent years and we need to pivot back towards those kinds of voices.

We must redouble our efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in our local councils to ensure they are reflective of the society they serve. By embracing diversity and fostering an inclusive political culture, we will be better able to address the needs of the communities we represent, especially those that have been historically marginalised or under-represented. I will talk a little about a charter of inclusion for Dublin. The charter has not yet been launched - we did the photocall this morning - but we will be talking about it a lot in the coming month or so. The whole idea is to look at how we can make local democracy more inclusive. How can we encourage people to serve their local communities?

With its rich history and diverse population, Dublin has always been a city of inclusivity and warmth. We recognise there is more work to be done, especially when it comes to the lived experience of the céad míle fáilte we talk about so often. In today's rapidly changing world, the imperative for inclusion in local democracy has never been more urgent. It is not enough to pay lip service to diversity. We must actively work to dismantle barriers, challenge biases and create opportunities for all. The charter to which I referred is the result of an extensive collaboration with 30 young people from diverse backgrounds across Dublin. It reflects the voices, experiences and aspirations from every corner of our city, where each perspective has been carefully considered and integrated into our charter for a more inclusive Dublin. Over the course of a two-day workshop, these impassioned change-makers came together to co-create a document from scratch that reflects the rich tapestry of Dublin's multicultural landscape. At its heart are the core values that resonate deeply with Dublin's spirit, including belonging and common humanity, dignity and respect, equality of opportunity, communal accountability, freedom, accessibility, safety and safeguarding. These principles serve as guiding beacons for our local democracy and illuminate a path towards a city where every individual feels valued, respected and empowered to take part in local democracy. Sets of associated behaviours are listed alongside.

After the local elections, it is my since hope that these values and behaviours will be embedded in our council and govern the work of our strategic policy committees. As we present the charter for adoption by Dublin City Council at its next meeting, we do so with a sense of optimism and determination because in our hands lies the power to shape the future of our city, a future where no one is left behind, we are kind to one another and everyone has the opportunity to thrive. It is important, as we are invited to appear before this committee and as we look forward to the idea of inclusion for everyone, that I extend my deepest gratitude to all those who contributed to this endeavour. Their passion, dedication and unwavering belief in the potential of our city and in serving our communities have been the driving forces behind this document. From what I have seen from the young people who took part, our city's future is in really safe hands.

Democracy is not just about having a vote; it is about our civic duty to participate and be actively involved in the decisions that affect our lives. The more diverse and inclusive we are as a city, the better for the future of our local democracy.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the Lord Mayor and welcome the mayor of Fingal, Mr. Henchy. We will now move to the leas-chathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Ms Eva Dowling

I thank the Cathaoirleach and Senators for the invitation to participate in these proceedings. I am a Green Party councillor and leas-chathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. I am a mum to three children. I have worked in politics all of my professional career. Today I will share some of my personal experiences and speak about some of the things we are doing well in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown which relate to the goals of this committee around women’s participation in local government and the challenges that face councillors with families.

I first ran for election in 2019 and on election day my eldest child had just turned eight weeks old. You can imagine becoming a parent, a mum, for the first time, learning everything that goes with that and also trying to get your election campaign under way. I managed to get through the campaign because of the support of my family, my friends, my party and, most important, the electorate, who believed that a new mum could do the job and represent them at local government.

What I found really challenging, as a mum working in politics, was staying in the job especially as my family increased in size. Fortunately we are doing some things really well in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, which helped me and other councillors like me.

First, the introduction of maternity leave for councillors has been a game changer. On the arrival of my youngest child I was able to avail of some of the supports from the scheme. It is a great pity that there is no provision for paternity leave. If we are to make local politics attractive for people with families, supports like childcare at council buildings or an allowance for childcare for councillors to attend meetings should be considered.

The second thing that helped me was the introduction of hybrid meetings. Our local authority was the first to fully embrace remote and hybrid meetings. Seven months after my second child was born, and therefore past the six months maternity leave, we were working through the second round of our county development plan meetings. These meetings go very late - usually until 10 p.m. and sometimes past midnight or 1 a.m. - for weeks on end. For me, this was not an appropriate place to bring my seven-month-old, breastfed baby. We went through over 300 motions and votes during this round of meetings. As the meetings were facilitated as hybrid, I was able to participate fully. I did not miss a single vote and I was still able to be there for my son.

Hybrid meetings were introduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There are councils who refuse to embrace them. There are councils – including my own – where there are attempts to water them down. It should not have taken a global pandemic to introduce this facility. This committee must prioritise the maintenance and full roll-out of hybrid meetings across all councils, because the value that they bring to women, people with families and people with disabilities is enormous.

The final thing that I want to share about what we are doing well in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is the culture of our workplace. When I first joined, almost all of the most senior roles on the executive were held by women. Not long after the council term commenced, we became the first local authority in the country to achieve full gender balance in the chamber. Those balances have shifted over the past five years but in my experience, the company culture has not. Working with councillors across the chamber, officials and council staff has always been a positive experience for me. We will not agree on everything, but I do not feel like my gender is a factor in that. I am asking this committee to examine the company culture of other local authorities and to survey other sitting and former women councillors and ask them what their experience has been like.

I was first elected in May 2019, as a new mum with an eight-week-old baby. On election day this year, my children’s ages will be five, three and one and I will have just entered my sixth month of pregnancy with my fourth child. My family, my friends, my party, and the residents of the Stillorgan electoral ward will support me through this election campaign. It is because of things like maternity leave, hybrid meetings and our company culture in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown that I feel confident to keep going for another five years. We have achieved a lot but we can still do more. Paternity leave, a childcare allowance, a full roll-out of hybrid meetings and a survey of company culture would be a great place to start.

An Cathaoirleach

I now call the mayor of Fingal, Mr. Adrian Henchy.

Mr. Adrian Henchy

As mayor of Fingal, I welcome this opportunity to present a statement to the Seanad Public Consultation Committee on the future of local democracy. It is fitting that you are considering this topic given that it is 125 years since the first councils were held following the introduction of the 1898 Local Government Act which established county and urban councils across Ireland. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Fingal County Council following the reform of local government in Dublin. One reason for increasing the number of local authorities in Dublin from two to four in 1994 was because Dublin County Council, in particular, had become too unwieldly.

There is no doubt that what we have achieved over the past 30 years in Fingal would not have happened if we were still part of Dublin County Council. Having our own local authority, with the ability to make decisions that are relevant to our own local communities, has been a success. Fingal is now the third-biggest local authority in Ireland, offering 924 different services to a population of 330,000 people. Over the past 30 years, we have seen our annual budget increase sixfold from €48.8 million in 1994 to €362 million in 2024 while our current three-year capital programme consists of 312 projects worth €1.35 billion. Many of these are currently on site.

However, it could be a lot better. A recent Council of Europe report pointed out that Ireland is a highly centralised country despite its small size, with fewer powers and resources devolved to local government than most European countries. In addition, research by academics has identified the severe, chronic weakness of local government in Ireland and suggested that Ireland ranks above only Moldova and Russia in relation to overcentralisation of power. I believe there is, among the general population, considerable support for giving greater powers and functions to local government. The current level of control exercised by different Departments over local government in Ireland is excessive and leads to unnecessary delays in drawing down funding and getting approval for resources and projects.

Fingal County Council looks after an area of 456 km2 which is well below the national average of 2,2000 km2 but our population of 330,000 is the third largest in the country. That means that our 40 councillors each represent 8,300 people, a figure that is well above the national average of 5,400 which is the highest among members of the Council of Europe.

That needs to change. It highlights the pressure placed on part-time councillors to represent the communities that elected them. I agree with the recommendation from the recent Dublin Citizens' Assembly, which considered the question of a directly elected mayor for Dublin, that councillors should be paid full-time representatives with secretarial support. The present situation where many councillors are trying to hold down full-time jobs while fulfilling a public representative role is unsustainable and is limiting the number of people who are willing to put themselves forward for election. Since the last local elections in 2019, we have lost several young councillors on Fingal County Council because they were struggling to find the time to properly represent their constituents. At a time when we are trying to broaden the base and the backgrounds of those entering politics, we need to be making it easier for people to commit on a full-time basis to the role of public representative. Making councillors full-time and giving them more power to make decisions at a local level would also free up more time for Members of the Oireachtas to concentrate on national policy issues.

I circulated my submission to my fellow councillors in Fingal County Council for observations in advance of today. This is included in an appendix to my report. I thank the committee for the opportunity to present here this morning.

An Cathaoirleach

I now call the mayor of south Dublin, Mr. Alan Edge.

Mr. Alan Edge

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to members and for the support it provides to us as local councillors in the exercise of our jobs and the limited powers that remain to us. That assistance is greatly appreciated.

Without wanting to pre-empt the report, I really hope it is acted on. I am grateful the committee is taking the time to look into this problem. We are in a crisis of democracy. It is a fundamental crisis. It is affecting every branch of government. The two main facts of the crisis, to which Mr. de Róiste alluded earlier, are accountability and access to decision makers by members of the public. That is why this is a very urgent matter.

Local government in Ireland has fewer powers than any other local government in Europe. The limited suite of powers that remain to us is being eroded all the time. To take a couple of examples that are in the news now, the increasing use of section 38 applications in relation to cycling infrastructure is proving controversial to all of us on the doorsteps, and also an erosion of functions and powers that were always within the remit of councillors. As part of our county development plan, we as councillors voted to limit the number of data centres in the county. We were slapped on the wrist by the Office of the Planning Regulator and told we could not do that. That is a fundamental function of local councillors that has been taken away. In addition, I live in a rural area of a largely urban county. Residents cannot get planning for single-dwelling houses.

We have made attempts in the county development plan to have a more pragmatic approach but we are told we cannot do that until the guidance has come from the Department. When will that guidance come? We have no idea. Until it comes, we are left hamstrung in the middle of a housing crisis. We have people unable to settle in the community that they called home for many years. There are a number of fundamental problems. That is a matter of accountability.

On access to services, councillors are a really important resource that is being squandered. Increasingly, people turn to their local councillor. We are close to the people we represent when they have a problem. In the last week alone, I have been contacted by two people. Both have children who cannot participate in mainstream education. There is an appalling lack of services in the area. Essentially, no assessment of local need has been done in the area. That is an area that councils and councillors are uniquely placed to carry out but instead we have people who are being forced to travel across the whole of Dublin to access these services because no one has taken the time to assess what is needed on the ground.

The disempowerment of local politicians is really in lockstep with the decline we are seeing in engagement with democracy across the board. I am not going to lay the blame on or offer an opinion on cycle lanes but, suffice it to say, if decision-making by local authorities is continuously eroded, people will lose faith in their democracy. As a councillor, I was canvassing the other day. A lady had three fundamental issues she wanted to discuss. Two related to section 38 applications of a very different order and one to a strategic housing development. There was nothing I could say to her. There is a question, if we do not work to restore our democracy, of how we persuade people not to turn to undemocratic actors.

I have a final point on directly elected mayors which I will finish on. If directly elected mayors are going to be in a situation where they are performing the largely symbolic role that we perform, it will be a colossal and expensive waste of time. Apart from that, it is impossible. No single person could perform for greater Dublin the role that we four provide.

An Cathaoirleach

That was going to be my question on the mayor, leas-chathaoirleach and lord mayor's view of directly elected mayors, as we have an imminent election of a mayor in Limerick.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I will be conscious of my time because we are really here to listen. I am particularly pleased that the Lord Mayor of Dublin, the leas-chathaoirleach, the mayor of Fingal and the mayor of South Dublin are here. I want to ask them three questions. The witnesses all made excellent submissions. I am a former county councillor for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. I get the sense from councillors across all four Dublin local authorities that they are working exceptionally well. It has taken a long time to bed them down. Mr. Henchy touched on the reasons this new structure came about and the unwieldy old Dublin County Council, as it was. Mr. Edge touched on the Government suggesting that it may proceed with a mayor for Dublin. That is certainly not going to happen in these local elections because there are no plans for it. I am picking up more and more as I go that the local authorities are happy to go along the way it is. I think it is working exceptionally well.

What is local politics about? The witnesses are the closest politicians to the people when it comes to subsidiarity. They live in their communities and represent their communities. Mr. Edge said it is to restore our local democracy. What a profound word. It is to restore our local democracy. The witnesses are challenging us about restoring many aspects of our local democracy. It is important that the witnesses here.

Nobody of the four we have heard from so far has touched on a recurring theme from the other sessions with councils, which has been the need for support for councillors to do their work, including independent legal advice, financial advice and planning advice. Planning, finance and legal are daily tasks, particularly in the witnesses' councils. How do the witnesses feel that truly independent advice could be improved to support them in their work? It is a recurring theme and something that they have not necessarily touched on today. They have limited time and I appreciate that. They might touch on that.

Senator Mark Wall

I welcome all the witnesses. As has been said, it has been very informative. The lord mayor touched on diversity. That is key to local government and we have discussed it at this committee. I know the report is only being launched today but it is something this committee needs to feed into because we need diversity in politics, specifically in local politics. It is timely that we have such a report coming from the witnesses' good office and we can work on that.

The submission regarding women has come up time and time again here. Obviously, we want more women in politics and that is important. I mentioned the survey of women councillors the last time. We have many councillors who are retiring for one reason or another. We need to have that survey and this committee needs to play a vital role in making that happen.

The matter of hybrid meetings has fallen both ways here so far. We have people saying that they do not want hybrid meetings and then, for very good reasons, the witnesses suggested today that we need more hybrid meetings. We need to tease it out a little more. The witnesses have given very valid reasons for why we need hybrid meetings.

Mr. Henchy spoke about untimely delays in funding. It has come up in discussions here. Maybe if he gives us examples of that, we can feed those into our report. It is something we get from councillors and many councils.

In response to Mr. Edge on the matter of councillors being close, as an ex-councillor, I know this too. We need to get local democracy back to local people. Maybe to expand on that, people are coming in and making decisions for Mr. Edge's area who are not from the area, when he knows exactly what is going on on the ground. As I say, he is on the ground. It is something that this report should reflect continuously and constantly. We need democracy close to the people and that is what the witnesses do daily.

Senator Frances Black

I thank the witnesses most sincerely for coming in and sharing their experience and expertise with this committee. I am aware of how hard they all work. Each of them is absolutely an expert on the needs of their communities. That is a huge resource which is not sufficiently recognised. I am so glad that we are able to hear directly about the issues that matter to them and the biggest challenges that they face in the course of their work. They have been honest and open, which is powerful.

I have a few questions which I will ask generally. What is the biggest obstacle for the witnesses when they are trying to work on behalf of their constituents? How can we here empower them to help their communities? Some of the witnesses have touched on the directly elected mayor system. I wanted to hear a little more about that. Some of them touched on it. Can they speak a little about their relationship with council management? I would like to hear a little more about that. How does that relationship impact their work? Does it enhance it or not? The issue of childcare is really important. There is no doubt that childcare is vital. I like the idea of the virtual meetings. That is a really good idea and I am glad to hear that the maternity leave for councillors scheme is working but I would like to hear more about what they think of paternity leave. It is important to have paternity leave because men often do not get a look-in when it comes to that area.

An Cathaoirleach

I welcome to the Gallery Scoil Mhuire from Trim in County Meath. They are most welcome to Seanad Éireann. Hopefully they will all be here at some stage in the future, sitting in the seats in front of me or representing their neighbours and friends in local authorities in County Meath.

Senator Pat Casey

I thank everyone for coming here this morning and giving their views. I will start with a question for Mr. de Róiste about local democracy. He focused on diversity and inclusion, and mentioned that great Irish quote, céad míle fáilte. Are we realistically living up to that today? The challenge for every county is diversity and inclusion in our society.

I look forward to seeing a copy of the proposal the witnesses are making, because maybe it is something that could be rolled our in each local authority as we are challenged with that.

Turning to Councillor Dowling, as I think Senator Wall mentioned, it is amazing when you sit here through all the consultation on the hybrid meetings and see the pros of it, but there was strong representation here at the previous meeting saying it is not working. There is a balance somewhere that needs to be achieved. It is fulfilling a role for people in the councillor's position, but maybe there are other occasions where it is just being abused because people do not want to tune in and be part of the process, which is disappointing as well. Councillor Dowling mentioned the county development plan meetings and the length of them. I have been through a good few of them, so I can fully understand it is not very practical. I was at one that went on until 3 a.m. You question the decisions you are making after a meeting that started at 10 a.m. and is still going on at 3 a.m.

Councillor Henchy mentioned a theme that has become very strong here when we are talking about the role of the councillor into the future, namely, that it is now a full-time role. That is acknowledged here. He also mentioned having the support. When discussing an earlier topic, Senator Boyhan raised having independent advice available to local authorities, be it on planning, financial or legal matters. That is something we need to focus on.

Councillor Edge mentioned a few things close to my interests, especially the county development plan and how councillors are now almost being completely directed from a national level. It is now a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach and councillors just have to accept that and adopt that. Then we have the Office of the Planning Regulator ensuring every amendment councillors make conforms to the national policy. On rural planning, coming from Glendalough, I live with lots of problems when it comes to rural planning, but I wonder whether the interpretation of the national policy is in question here and how planners are interpreting that because the policy clearly refers to social or economic need. However, that just seems to be ignored at council level and it is something we need to focus on. The guidelines have not changed since 2005. Maybe we would be better off not changing them from the indications I have seem about what is coming down the line. We might be better off sticking with what we have.

Senator Joe O'Reilly

I welcome the witnesses, who were very well spoken. I have two observations. The Lord Mayor, Councillor de Róiste, concentrated on this a good bit, but it was referenced by all the witnesses. It is the whole idea of building communities and strengthening them. There are a myriad of reasons for the growth of the far right and we could all talk all day about them, but among the big reasons is the death of old communities. People had their own local community and they felt a part of it. It was their raison d'être and their whole existence. Then suddenly new people come into it, the thing gets skewed from their perspective and that sense of security, that sense of community, goes. That is a critical thing in the growth of the far right, in my view. There are a hundred other reasons, of course, but that is one of them. Consequently, it is important on that level, and on every level, to build communities and get that sense of community. I mean that old neighbourly thing, the big meitheal thing in a community sense, which existed in old Dublin and in rural Ireland. It is about that being recreated.

The second aspect is the inverse of what the founding fathers of America said. They said they wanted no taxation without representation. The converse is true in our case. Until councils are courageously collecting tax and courageously spending it and taking that on board, there will be no local democracy.

Mr. Daithí de Róiste

I thank the Senators for their comments. I have a couple of different things to say in response. I am fully in favour of a directly elected mayor, but when are we going to get serious about it? As the mayor of South Dublin, Councillor Edge, said, there is this idea of just doing something for the sake of doing it. Are we going to give a directly elected mayor the power to actually run the city? I do not believe so. If we look at what has come out of the citizens' assembly and everything else, I do not see the Department of housing giving over housing authority to a directly elected mayor. I do not see the Department of Transport and the NTA giving power to a directly elected mayor. I do not see the Department of Justice giving power over policing in the city to a directly elected mayor. That is just on the political side. The recommendations indicate the directly elected mayor should be in charge of all the primary health centres in Dublin and primary and secondary schools in Dublin. We are 12 years trying to amalgamate Irish Water and get the staff across and we think we are going to be able to do those things with a directly elected mayor.

It was recommended that the four local authorities stay separate, but that is four directors of services and four chief executives. I do not know how it works. We would probably be better served with a Minister for Dublin at the Cabinet table than a directly elected mayor. If we give the position the power, then I say, "Yes, 100%", but we are not going to get the power for housing, policing or transport, so what are we doing? We are creating this office that somebody is going to run for and have a five-year term, but ultimately they are not going to be able to deliver anything. They will get what are called consultative powers, which means they do not have the power to do anything within the city. Unless we are going to fully resource it, get behind it and say this is what we want to do, it is pointless. It is a waste of time and it is fugazi that everybody is talking about, if you ask me, and I am someone who is in favour of a directly elected mayor.

On the point about women, we are hosting a gathering in the Mansion House in a couple of weeks for councillors who are not running again and about 85% of them are women. They are the most talented politicians I have come across in local government and they are deciding it is not for them. It is for a myriad of reasons, but that is what they are deciding. It is mostly brilliant women who have done so much throughout our process, like Alison Gilliland, Anne Feeney and Tara Deacy. They are deciding not to run again. There is something fundamentally wrong with our system of local democracy if these really talented public representatives are deciding this is not for them. That needs to be addressed and addressed seriously.

On the independent advice, maybe this is from a Dublin City Council perspective, but I have no issues with that. We regularly bring in senior counsels, or if the councillors request one, the executive will come back with a panel and we will pick one and we can get independent advice as we wish.

The relationship with the executive is really positive from the point of view of my council. We had a new chief executive, Mr. Richard Shakespeare, come in before Christmas. He has hit the ground running when it comes to consultation, meeting individual groups and bringing everybody in as part of the process. We have a really good relationship in Dublin City Council as part of that.

It would be lunacy to reverse the idea of hybrid meetings. If the argument is people are disengaged, they are going to be disengaged in the chamber or at home because they are disengaged in their work. I do not think I would be doing that. There is the facilitation piece for people at home with family life, but there is also climate. If we are going to walk the talk on climate action, why should I have to come in to City Hall three or four times a week for an hour-long meeting we can do online? That is what hybrid facilitates. We have joint policing committees, area committees and strategic policy committees. You could be driving into the centre of the city three or four times a week for a meeting that is working really well in a hybrid way. On anything we do, the recommendation must be that it must be there to facilitate people, and those who are disengaged are disengaged in the chamber as well.

Ms Eva Dowling

I will pick up the hybrid meetings topic. I fully support us enabling councillors to attend in person. The thrust of the debate is brilliant when you can attend in person. It is not just for people with small children, but also people with disabilities and younger people as well. It is not just about hybrid meetings. We should be looking at how accessible our buildings are and always assessing that to ensure they are physically accessible for everybody. It goes to my point about childcare. I have brought my babies into the chamber, but it is really common in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown for councillors - men and women across the chamber - to bring a child for maybe an hour before the other parent comes and picks them up.

This is the busy family life we are all living. There is no reason we could not have some sort of provision for childcare, so maybe we should focus on that rather than on removing hybrid.

To give an example, during our first round of county development meetings, which was in 2020, we facilitated them by being socially distanced. This was before we brought in hybrid. Around this time, the gender balance we had just achieved on our council was dwindling and we lost that balance by about three or four councillors in the space of a few months. Women were silently resigning from the council, and while I do not want to speculate as to what those reasons were, the gender balance was going. It was Councillor Mary Hanafin who raised this and we surveyed our past and present women councillors in Dún Laoghaire about it. It was during this time that I was expecting my second child, and I was looking around the chamber, seeing women resigning, watching my belly expand and wondering how I was going to do this. I was not sure if I was going to be able to stay in the job, but it was from the introduction of hybrid that I was able to stay, and I was really proud to participate completely in all our meetings.

Hybrid is important and is not just for women. It is for people with disabilities and younger people as well. Another aspect Senators are looking to examine in these proceedings relates to how to get younger people interested and involved, and younger people are lacking in council chambers throughout the country. The lord mayor referred to climate action. I invite Senators to look at what we are doing in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The chamber and the hybrid system are working and there have been tweaks along the way. It was not perfect to begin with but it functions really well.

On paternity leave, as politicians we need to lead by example, and if we want to have full equality in our country, we need to roll out paternity leave, which every other workplace has. Plenty of men on our council have also had children during the most recent term. I was really proud to put forward a motion during this council term calling for full maternity and paternity leave, and every councillor in our chamber immediately supported it. It had overwhelming support, but it was a great pity that only maternity leave was acknowledged and provided for. It is important both for women and for gender equality.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Ms Dowling and call on the mayor of Fingal.

Mr. Adrian Henchy

I thank the Cathaoirleach. Mr. de Róiste covered the issue of the directly elected mayor very well and I probably could not have summarised it better. The challenge is going to concern whether it will be a cosmetic appointment or a real one, and whatever way it falls it should fall on the "real" side. There is going to be a directly elected mayor in Limerick following the local and European elections in June, and I presume that will be carefully looked at to see what will fall out from that and what learnings can be got. If it goes well and there are positive learnings, we can look to do it in some of the other major cities.

To respond to Senator Boyhan about the time that councillors give, I was first elected in 2014 and, like anybody, you want to do the divil and all, be all things to all people and be involved in every group, whether it be something on the local authority, on HSE or school boards or in the local community and local clubs, and next thing you find yourself at meetings pretty much every night or every day of the week and you are stretching yourself beyond breaking point. We all want to do that, but it possibly feeds into why we are losing some councillors and public representatives. There are myriad reasons for that but often it is because we are stretched to breaking point. It is about having that almost wrap-around support that is needed to enable you to carry out your functions. When I was preparing for today, I had a deadline for area committee meeting questions last night, and generally you want to get in your questions and your representations, so you are working pretty much up to 12 midnight to get them in because of the deadline falling. Of course, there is then everything that falls from that. In the case of in Fingal, and I am sure it is the same on the other local authorities, there is the full council, special policy committee meetings, area committee meetings, various subgroups within the council, HSE meetings, local community group meetings, school boards and so on. It just stretches people to breaking point and that is where we need to strike the balance. If anything were to come out of that, that wrap-around support can make a huge difference.

To respond to Senator Wall on diversity, I am not sure of the direction in which we are going. In Fingal, a lot of young councillors and women councillors have come in since 2014 but a lot of them have gone and left the pitch. There is probably no single reason for that but I suspect it is to do with a lot of what I have just said. The demands are enormous and we have to find a balance in that regard. Where we do not want to be is that, effectively, our local authorities and, indeed, our Dáil have an age profile on the older side. I do not want to come across as ageist but our Parliament and our local authorities should reflect our communities and our communities are reflected by women, men, young people, the middle-aged and older people, and that is truly the balance we need to strike, although I do not know whether that truly is the case.

On funding, projects and examples of that, all the time on some of the major projects, where something may need to be done over a three- or four-year cycle, you get the funding in the first year and then desperately hope you will get it again in the second and third years. That is where it can be stressful. I can speak only about Fingal County Council, which largely prides itself on maxing out any funding it gets and probably goes back for more at the end of every year. I do not know whether that is the case in every other local authority but it is possibly an example. If some local authorities are performing quite well and getting their projects done in a timely, cost-effective and efficient manner, they should be held up as the exemplar and should not be held back. If other local authorities are not up to that level, we need to get them up to that level. There is always a bit of stress relating to funding, especially for major projects.

On relationships with council staff, I speak to the chief executive in Fingal County Council, AnnMarie Farrelly, and all the directors and staff. The best thing I have found about being mayor is that you get to know all the staff. Before I became mayor, I was a councillor and I thought I knew most of them, but as mayor you go to all the events, every day, so you meet all the departments. When I finish up in a few weeks, one thing I will take away is that local authority staff have great pride in their elected councillors and in their mayor. I see that at every event I go to as mayor, where they are delighted to have you there, whether it is water, operations, active travel, planning or whatever else. I have nothing but praise for AnnMarie Farrelly and how she carries out her work as chief executive.

Senator O’Reilly mentioned the growth of the far-right. Social media is the elephant in the room that has come into all our lives and we are not truly on top of it. We have all been subject to scenarios at events, meetings or when going about your business that a phone is put in your face and it is very uncomfortable. I am a big enough guy and I played football and other sport, so I feel as though I can hold my ground, but I often feel very intimidated, uncomfortable and unsettled, so I can only imagine how maybe a woman feels in that situation. In the past, with traditional media, there was some degree of regulation and control but now people are living their lives through their phones. That is their source of information and the level of disinformation is unbelievable.

It is something that we are really having to grapple with. I hope I have covered most of what has been asked. I will leave it at that.

An Cathaoirleach

Thank you. I call the mayor of South Dublin County Council.

Mr. Alan Edge

I want to pick up on a few themes that have emerged. I will first look at diversity and the question of the rise of the far right. If I had known that Daithí de Róiste was going to bring his charter along and launch it today, I would have launched my own. Let me give it a little plug now anyway. It has a much more limited compass but is on a very important issue, specifically the rights of asylum seekers and people seeking international protection. We have a serious issue that is undermining our democracy as a whole, namely, the victimising of these people. This is essentially a charter that is going out to community groups all over the county asking them to recognise that the right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right and a question of human dignity, and asking them to support the right of those seeking international protection to flourish and thrive. There was a soft launch yesterday, if I can put it that way. The email went out to a number of clubs and, as of this morning, 50 had got back to me in the affirmative. We will be doing a formal launch down the line.

That is an example of councillors and local authorities carving out a role for themselves in the absence of any real devolved powers. As I said, we have a unique connection to community groups. We have the power to influence people. I have reached out to politicians across the political spectrum and they have said they are interested. However, my focus is really on community groups and their reach and the fact we can act as a conduit and build a consensus that way.

To respond to another point that was raised, I am bound to say the executive in South Dublin have been extraordinarily supportive. We have been working very hard together to ensure all of the people in the local authority are respected and not victimised and subjected to disinformation. I have an excellent relationship with the chief executive and he has been fully supportive of this initiative.

I will raise a couple of other matters. The meitheal idea is something we have been doing very well in South Dublin. Our current chief executive was formerly the head of the community department. We have a huge amount of work going on. A number of people who are international protection applicants are working with local communities, in particular the older community groups such as the Tidy Towns group, planting Stepping Stone forests and so on. There is huge potential. There is also evidence that local authorities, local councillors and the executive are willing and able to do more than they are currently doing. A fundamental piece of that is the community piece mentioned by Senator O’Reilly. This is essential. A part of combating the rise of the far right and disinformation is reaching into the community from the ground up, which is very important.

In terms of funding, the Senator makes an excellent point. We have kind of skirted around the issue. To be clear, I think we should have the power to raise our own funds, whether that be levying a tax or otherwise, so long as it is made clear to people. One of the difficulties in this country is that people are chary about taxation because they do not necessarily see the benefits. The problem with the LPT, which in fairness has been partially resolved now, is that it would be impossible to sell to our constituents taxation in South Dublin if probably a good portion of it is going to mend potholes in Leitrim and Roscommon. No offence to Leitrim and Roscommon, but that is a difficult sell. If we are able to empower local authorities and say they have the power to do this, and explain where that taxation will go and that people will be able to see the results in their local community, then we can and should do that.

I am not going to deal at length with the issue of the turnover of councillors. We had a fairly significant turnover of councillors in South Dublin, which is regrettable. A higher number of women councillors have not continued, and these are very able people and people of calibre. There are two aspects to this. First, if local authorities and councillors are not more empowered, it will become nigh on impossible to attract people of that calibre. The second point, of course, is that they need to be supported. For people who have families or have their own businesses, it is simply not a viable option for them and, certainly, for people coming from more disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, there is no way in for them unless we provide the supports. That covers some if not all of those points.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank the Lord Mayor, the Leas-Chathaoirleach and the mayors of Fingal and South Dublin for their contributions. We move on to the next round of contributors. We begin with Dublin City Council and Councillor Dermot Lacey.

Mr. Dermot Lacey

Thank you. It is an honour to be speaking in this building. I could get used to it, but we will see. I have been a councillor since 1993. I have been very fortunate and have held nearly every job one can have in local government. I have written about local government and talked about local government. On any of those points, the committee can ask me any question, and I have also made a lengthy submission.

I have a very simple view. I believe Ireland can be transformed through local government reform. It is a very simple political premise but I believe it. Suffice to say that the record of successive governments has not been especially great. Senators should be reminded that, only this month, they passed legislation that further took power from councillors, the Planning and Development Bill, which removes powers from us, and there was the massive attack on the joint policing committees, which has removed the power of councillors to elect the chairperson, set the agenda and so forth. I ask Senators to reflect a little on the more recent record as well as the longer record.

The reality is that all of this is done because the civil servants and the Department want it to be done. I have six points to make. The first is that breaking the stranglehold of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is the key step to reforming local government. We do not need a civil servant telling us what agendas we should have, who should be chair and so forth. That is a key point.

Second, the national pay agreements usually load councils with the responsibility of implementing much of them and the implementation of the pay deals, yet there is no representative of councillors or local government at any of the pay talks. Therefore, the second point I would make is that AILG or LAMA should be represented at those talks and, in particular, at the national economic dialogue.

The third point is that councillors have no role in the appointment of the chief executive. The current system is like the board of Aldi appointing the managing director of Lidl. It is daft and should be changed.

Fourth, any quango that involves local government should have a local government representative. The fact is that all of these agencies have no elected representative at their heart, which is wrong.

Fifth, as the Labour Party representative, I want to say in particular that we have to deal with the issue of pay. In the Moorhead report, a councillor’s salary was linked to that of a civil servant, yet that same civil servant has received at least three increments since that process started whereas councillors have not received any. By the way, Senators and TDs are at the top of the incremental scale so it does not affect them. If the Minister wants to honour the Moorhead report, he should bring in the increments.

The next point concerns the SPC chairperson’s allowance. This was set at €6,000 some 20 years ago and it is now taxed. I do not know of any other job where there has been no increase in 20 years and it is now taxable, so I ask that that be changed.

The third point on pay is the issue of municipal district chairpersons and area committee chairpersons. Dublin has no municipal districts so the chairpersons of the area committees, which in most cases are larger than MDs, receive no payment while our rural colleagues get payments of up to €12,000.

The final point I want to make is this. We have all talked about the financing of local government. I doubt if anybody in Ireland understands how local government is financed, including the people in the Department responsible. I have called for years for a national forum on the financing of local government to be established, where we would agree a system of financing. The political debate can be held afterwards as to what the rates and charges are, and so on. The present system of partial block grants with a bit of LPT and some pilot financing does not work. Nobody understands it, and nobody can fight for reform if they do not understand that. Therefore, my final call is for the establishment of a national forum on the financing of local government.

An Cathaoirleach

Go raibh maith agat. I call Councillor Michael Clark.

Dr. Michael Clark

It is truly an honour to sit in this beautiful Chamber and I am very grateful to the Chair and the committee for undertaking this very important work. With the local and European election campaigns in full swing across the country, the efforts of this committee to recognise the vital importance of these two non-Oireachtas exercises in democracy are particularly necessary, and I am sure there will also be other elections in the next 12 months.

I am particularly gratified to follow Councillor Dermot Lacey. We served together on the UCD governing authority, another type of body that councillors are no longer members of. That has also happened in very recent times.

I also echo what he said about area committee chairpersons. In my five years as a councillor, the hardest job I had was as chairperson of the Dún Laoghaire area committee, with many long meetings dealing with SHDs week after week, two meetings a month, with extensive bureaucratic challenges associated with those. There is no recognition, no remuneration and no respect given to those in the Dublin area.

As outlined in my submission, I would like to concentrate on three particular issues: the imbalance of powers and functions whereby councillors are all too often subservient to the council’s executive; councillors’ own failure to rigorously enforce standing orders; and the increasingly impossible demands on councillors’ time for what is, officially at least, a part-time role but with full-time expectations from our citizens.

Regarding councillor-executive interactions, the vast majority of interactions I have had with officials have been cordial, professional and respectful. However, I have noticed periodically an almost impatient disrespect shown by the executive to democratically reached decisions by councils and especially area committee meetings. I acknowledge that there is a delineation between executive and councillor functions but it would be absolutely intolerable in a private business for executives to effectively ignore the recommendations or directions from the company board on certain key decisions. The public are understandably frustrated when their elected representatives are seemingly powerless to effect changes to council actions. Inevitably that breeds a certain cynicism among those citizens because they see there is no way to affect the decisions of the council.

In many councils across Ireland, there is an inherent asymmetry. There is no way to hold the executive truly accountable. We can complain, we can formally object, we can occasionally direct via various section motions, but we can rarely control what is actually in our council chamber.

That brings me to my second point, something for which we councillors cannot blame anybody else, and that is how we run our own meetings. As someone who is not always a paragon of brevity myself, we are not always the best at following our own standing orders. We are not always the best at enforcing the various rules and procedures within our own council bodies. I would urge cathaoirligh to restrain the speaking times of councillors and, more importantly, officials when we have a very restricted agenda, generally dominated by officials' business rather than councillors' business.

Finally, it is becoming increasingly impossible to find the time to properly discharge the duties of a councillor, particularly while maintaining a day job. I thank my employer and my teaching colleagues for facilitating my day here in the Seanad Chamber. Taking meetings alone, councillors are required to attend council, area committee and strategic policy committee meetings every month. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg as certain councillors are nominated to numerous outside bodies with multiple meetings per year. I am a member of numerous council subcommittees. I serve on an education and training board, on five governing boards of management, on two audit and risk committees and am constantly hounded to participate on interview boards. That schedule of meetings is just incompatible with a full-time job. I acknowledge that, as a secondary school teacher, I have wonderful holidays in the summer, but I have relatively little flexibility during the school year and school day.

The Moorhead report did not match the expectations of councillors and certainly did not allow councillors to take on that big decision to embrace politics full time. I appreciate the public might be reluctant to create more full-time politicians but a crisis point approaches.

This committee has already heard that other comparable countries have a much lower citizen-councillor ratio than Ireland does. We must either reduce our demands and expectations of part-time councillors or else invest in full-time professional councillors. These hard decisions will underpin the democratic legitimacy of local government in the future.

Ms Anne Colgan

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach as ucht an tseans seo chun cúis na gcomhairleoirí a chur roimh an gcoiste.

Cities are where the vast majority of people will spend their lives into the future. The quality of life of city dwellers is hugely important and a core part of our responsibility. Inclusive neighbourhoods need to be designed for that population - for children, for young people, for older people and for people who live and work in cities. The responsibility for inclusive design, inclusive neighbourhoods and communities falls to our local authorities. Our urban local authorities do a really good job. However, do they do a good job based on sound principles of local democracy? Is the ethos one of meaningful local democracy? Is power and influence decentralised from Government to local institutions to allow those local authorities to do that job in a meaningful way? The answer is a resounding "No". Many colleagues have expounded on this here today and on other days and I will not go into it again. It is well documented in the Council of Europe monitoring report and in the AILG's research in Maynooth University. I fully support those assessments. I would just like to mention two or three practical points where I feel this issue comes into play in particular. There are threats to local democracy from without and within. The ones from within are the ones we really should take seriously and address. I include everyone in this room and outside it who has a responsibility for governance and government.

The first thing I would like to make reference to is the policymaking function of the councillor. The councillors’ reserved functions are the means by which we exercise our democratic governance. The ease with which these can be removed by Ministers with no solid case based on evidence is a fundamental threat to local democracy. Councillors' policy remit relating to local policy should be the subject of an in-depth review to clarify, strengthen and protect the policymaking function and restrain the power of Ministers to restrict or remove reserved functions, for example, in the area of housing. I hope the committee will make that the subject of a recommendation.

Second, there is a question of how policy is made in the first instance and what the local influence on policymaking is. Who influences national policy? I would certainly have to say that it is not us. Our experience and our local communities are ignored as a rich source of input into policymaking. We have no structured mechanism to bring our experience to bear on national policy. The top-down model prevails. Through our representative body, the AILG, we get invited to working groups and so on, which is very welcome. However, this is unstructured and at the discretion of the centre. Routinely recommendations, especially on legislative matters, are ignored while other very well-resourced interest groups seem to have an unequal influence on policy.

The third point relates to ministerial powers and this is the one that concerns me most. One of the most concerning developments is that the section 28 ministerial powers have now been given such mandatory force. They undermine local planners. They undermine the governance role of local representatives and, by extension, the citizen's rights. When we talk about design of our urban spaces, of course we and our citizens know what we need, but our powers through our local county development plans are being eroded.

The committee is working on its recommendations, which we all greatly look forward to. Even before those recommendations have ink, the committee will be voting on a planning Bill that will leach and strip away the power of local democracy and local government. There is a challenge for the committee members and their colleagues long before their recommendations are written. That is a question for the committee. I support the recommendations on funding.

It is not just with area chairs. There is legal discrimination against urban councillors because we have no municipal districts with the legal backing of municipal districts. Our area committees have no legal force.

The balance of power between the councillors and executive is a very sticky issue which needs to be looked at. I personally do not support the concept of a directly elected mayor and will actively canvass against it. I believe we will be swapping one kind of executive for another and we will have an elected executive taking us in a scary way down the road of the Americanisation of Irish politics.

We, as councillors, must take responsibility for the way we behave and how we exercise our governance function in the chamber. I believe the model of a governing group and an opposition group in the chamber is a lazy copying of the Dáil model.

It does not do us any justice. It pits us against each other instead of working together toward the Executive and holding it to account. We should really think again about how we sort ourselves out and work in the chamber.

Ms Deirdre Donnelly

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus leis na Seanadóirí as ucht cuireadh a thabhairt dom labhairt anseo inniu i Seomra an tSeanaid. I will focus on two issues that are relevant to councillors and democracy in Ireland today. I first call out the lack of powers accorded to a councillor. Despite being elected with a mandate to represent the people of their constituency, many decisions that impact our community are left to unelected officials. Whereas the Dáil and the Seanad introduce, scrutinise and vote on Bills, which in turn become law, our councillors across the country have limited powers. One such example in my area of Stillorgan, County Dublin, was the closure of Glenalbyn swimming pool ten years ago. I am using this example, but we all have examples in our own areas. This pool was the lifeblood of the community for schools, special needs groups, the elderly and clubs. A decade later the site is there, the funding is there and the public and political will to have it reopened is certainly there. Despite meetings and motions at local and council level the Executive gives us the same response that negotiations are ongoing. The management in councils across the country effectively hold a veto over key decisions affecting us all.

My second point refers to an issue that has been in the public domain for some time, which is the safety and security of public representatives. Like others, I have been the recipient of online messages, lewd and disgusting comments, vile pornographic clips and there is a view that most of the intimidation of public representatives is by people unknown to them. However, when the incident I outlined was occurring I was also dealing with something more concerning. I have been harassed and assaulted by a fellow councillor from another local authority at a council event. That series of incidents on the evening in question affected me greatly, but nothing prepared me for the disgraceful justice and political system I experienced afterwards. I have spoken about Ireland's justice system already and that is a discussion for another day, but I was extremely disappointed at the lack of support I felt came from the individual's party, my own council and the Department of local government. On that, I will make two points.

An Cathaoirleach

I remind the councillor that while everyone has privilege in the Seanad Chamber it is qualified, and she has to be careful.

Ms Deirdre Donnelly

I am careful not to identify any parties or individuals-----

An Cathaoirleach

Or to make them identifiable. I know it is in the public domain, but I want to make the councillor aware of that.

Ms Deirdre Donnelly

I will be clear that everything I am saying is in the public domain. It has gone to print and journalists have allowed it go to print. I am clear that I am careful about that. I respect the Seanad and I am grateful for the opportunity to come in here. May I pick up on my time?

An Cathaoirleach

Absolutely, but it is part of the Standing Orders and I have to make people aware.

Ms Deirdre Donnelly

I understand that. I thank the Cathaoirleach. The Government should provide a duty of care to our elected representatives. To date, I have had to pay €20,000 in medical and other expenses, which is almost my entire councillor allowance after tax for the past one and a half years. That means I have essentially been working for free. A number of Ministers and Ministers of State for local government have been made aware of my concerns. I do not think anything satisfactory has happened to date in relation to this. We have funding for security measures for councillors, which was introduced recently, but for those of us - I am not the only one - who have had bad experiences, we paid for our CCTV and other upgrades years ago. I also believe that political parties should be compelled to implement a code of conduct with regard to harassment, in particular of a sexual nature. It appears there is no official disciplinary process for such complaints. If the Government can cut party funding when gender quotas are not met, why not do the same to ensure such a code is introduced and implemented? I can provide everybody with more comprehensive details later, as I have some other documents on this.

As the 2024 local elections loom a positive emphasis has been placed on a more diverse political representation. While training and financial support are certainly important to encourage new people into political life, I believe the Government focus should also be on retention. How many will leave, disillusioned, due to our overly centralised Government with limited local powers? How many will leave because of safety concerns for themselves and their families? If we are really going to address these issues I plead for support for more decision-making powers for councillors and a much safer environment for them to serve their communities.

Mr. Barry Saul

As I stand to speak, I am aware of how comfortable these Seanad seats are. They are more comfortable than the ones in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council.

Senator Victor Boyhan

There are none left.

Mr. Barry Saul

I am delighted to make a submission to the Seanad Public Consultation Committee on the future of local government. I thank the Cathaoirleach, the rapporteur and the Senators for joining us today to hear our voices. In preparing for today I listened back to previous meetings. Many councillors from all parties spoke about the challenges and frustrations of local government and the systems of local government. There were also insightful contributions from Deputies Howlin, Ó Cuív, Phelan and former Deputy Noel Dempsey. The committee has heard a lot of varied and interesting voices. I ask what I can add to this conversation that has not been added before, but there is much evidence and research regarding the current state of local government and its deficiencies. I can tell the committee where Ireland ranks on the autonomy scale versus our partners in Europe, but I think it is well aware of those statistics by now. I could talk about the reduction of powers to councillors over successive Governments, but I think my colleagues here and in previous meetings have already articulated this.

I will touch on my time as a member of the citizens' assembly on the directly-elected mayor and local government. To be honest, I was not a fan of citizens' assemblies. Every time I heard one being announced I probably raised my eyes to heaven and said that was a job the Oireachtas should be doing. I was probably cynical going into it, but was delighted to be chosen to be a member. I thought it was a fantastic process and the final report was interesting. One of our first challenges was that the assembly became 100% focused on the directly-elected mayor and not on the other term of reference, which was to consider the structures of local government within Dublin. It was a fascinating process and one I fully enjoyed. A colleague here today was on it, as were various other councillors. A lot of long weekends, Saturdays and Sundays were given up by councillors and members of the public. There were a large number of presentations from members of academia, county managers and former councillors. One of the most fascinating was from the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who gave a passionate speech on local and regional government. I hope the committee considers inviting him if it can, because he was an interesting speaker. Most interesting about the whole process was the public engagement process of the citizens' assembly, and the journey they, and we, as councillors, went on. Some 1,500 applications were received and 67 people were randomly selected to serve on it. At our first meeting, the level of knowledge of the local government system was limited. During the process I was asked many interesting questions as a councillor. I was asked if my driver had dropped me off and how big my secretarial staff was. The enlightenment and the journey members of the public went on about the role of the councillor and the lack of supports was interesting. After several meetings, and at our last meeting, those with limited knowledge of local government structures were challenging and questioning the expert panels, which was incredible to see. There was real engagement and the whole group finished its journey with vast knowledge of local government structures in Ireland. That knowledge and the learning experience of members of the citizens' assembly showed up in the final votes. On the question of whether councillors should be made full time, 90% voted in favour. On the question of whether councillors' salaries should be more reflective of full-time commitment, 94% voted in favour. You might mistake some of those voting results for an AILG or LAMA conference, but these were randomly picked members of the general public. There was 57% in favour of keeping local government structures as they are. Some 88% voted that the cabinet of a directly elected mayor, should one be chosen, be made up of councillors.

This committee has heard from a lot of people, but it needs to be bold, brave and to make decisions. The mandate the committee and we, as councillors, have received from the citizens' assembly is shown in the high levels of support for reform of local government, reforms of the working conditions of councillors and reform of local democracy.

Finally, we remember the salary increases for councillors and the long process that took. Many Ministers were afraid to make those decisions in case there was a public backlash. The citizens' assembly, when they were educated and when they went through a process, were fully in support, by 90% and 94%, of reforms to local government. I hope the committee takes them on board.

I thank the Cathaoirleach again for the privilege of coming into the Chamber.

Mr. Mark Lynch

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the invitation to speak today.

I am relatively new to local politics having had the honour of being co-opted onto South Dublin County Council in February last year representing the Rathfarmham-Templeogue area. I, therefore, can offer a fresh perspective on the topic of local government.

While I had little hands-on experience in local or national politics up until recently, I managed a members-owned club for over a decade prior to taking up the position of councillor. Members-owned clubs are, by their nature, political organisations and have a similar dynamic to council structure: a permanent management, staff and rotating board members akin to councillors. As such, I have an appreciation for both the executive and the public representative perspectives.

If we are to have strong local government, it is critically important that we have a system that attracts good-quality diverse candidates representative of our communities. The first major stumbling block is the time commitment required for the remuneration that is on offer. To do the job properly requires a minimum of 30 hours per week, and often more, and this is not possible for someone who has a full-time job and-or family commitments. I had to turn down an earlier opportunity to become a councillor and could only accept the position at a later time when my personal and financial circumstances allowed. Many excellent people who could make a valuable contribution to local government are not, and may never be, in a position to do so under the current system.

Since my co-option in 2013, I have been impressed by the skill, dedication and desire of council management and staff to deliver the best possible level of service, vision and development of our county. Each person whom I have dealt with is clearly passionate about what he or she does and in what way he or she believes in the best interests of the county as a whole. However, the system within which they operate lacks accountability to the communities that they service.

The system can create an environment where councillors are a nuisance to be endured rather than public servants representing their constituents. This is not the fault of any individual or group. People who work in any organisation can only be as good as the system within which they operate. There is a disconnect between constituents, councillors and the strategic direction of the council. The balance of power remains with the Executive and central Government with councillors having tokenistic input into strategic capital investment, the allocation of resources and budgeting. Without the ability to have genuine and worthwhile input, it is difficult for councillors to properly represent their constituents. As one constituent once put it to me, "What is the point of councillors if you do not have the power to act on my behalf?"

We are seeing a steady decline in public confidence in our politicians and political system. It is crucial that we take every necessary action to ensure that our democracy does not fail, as it appears to be doing in many other countries. A strong, local democratic system is required where councillors and directly-elected mayors can hold executives to account who, in turn, are answerable to their constituents. A local government system must, however, be designed in such a way so that the overall agreed strategic role of the council cannot be frustrated by minority objectors. The introduction of a plebiscite on an enhanced local area development plan coupled with limiting avenues of subsequent ultra-localised objections should be examined. It is disheartening that Ireland has one of the weakest local government systems in Europe but this gives us an opportunity to design a system that ensures citizens have a say in decisions that directly affect them. There are excellent examples of strong government structures throughout Europe, the best elements of which we should use as a template to design our own new system.

I thank the committee for its work on this crucial issue and wish it every success in this endeavour.

Ms Lyn Hagin Meade

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members.

It is my honour and privilege to represent Firhouse-Bohernabreena in South County Dublin, where I was co-opted in 2022. I have served as chair of the land use planning and transportation strategic policy committee, on the corporate policy group, as local area chair, and as a member of the east midlands regional assembly.

On my first day in the council, I had only an hour's introduction to the role, with documentation, but I needed more. In my council, I have advocated for a compendium of online videos and presentations from the council term to be supplied to any new councillor to aid in his or her acclimatisation for the role and that this support should be available for all councillors around the country. Likewise, I attended the climate crisis and local government CPD certificate, run by UCC and AILG, where councillors from around the country had the time and space to discuss, consider, learn and share. Access to a professional qualification in local government can benefit councillors' confidence, knowledge and effectiveness in the role.

Starting out, I believed that the role of a county councillor would be the often cited 18 hours. Indeed, for the first few summer months, it was. As a councillor becomes familiar with the issues and debates, the role balloons. There are no boundaries around the range of issues or specialisations, or the hours. The remuneration is certainly not commensurate with the responsibility of oversight, preparation, meetings, local work, events and communications that a diligent councillor is obliged to make to fulfil the role. Council work is 24-7. We field calls and emails, late into night and on weekends. One colleague took a call before their wedding. The always-on narrative needs to change systemically, with a clear delineation of the work and hours expected of a councillor and the explicit right to switch off.

Likewise while working in the chamber has a unique value, I would argue that it is not the only way that digitally literate councillors can make valuable contributions. In 2023, I suffered an ankle injury and hybrid work became invaluable. Based on my experience, I believe it is essential that all councillors should be afforded an equal opportunity to access hybrid meetings, such as I am in the chamber in south County Dublin.

I am the mother of four teens. There are additional needs and I have a child on a reduced school day. My council work is only possible because my husband has a flexible schedule.

Without set hours, there is no way to plan, manage or negotiate a care system which is rigorous and timed. It may be impossible or unfeasible to get care at short notice or for variable amounts of time. I have watched competent, committed and hard-working colleagues cite the issue of care as a reason for leaving politics. If the logistics of care is seen as a minority issue, it will remain a minority issue. Diversity and gender parity of representation will not change in our chambers if carers find the position untenable.

I am supportive of building a diverse councillor body and in 2023, I became one of 15 councillor-mentors with the Immigrant Council of Ireland's three-month scheme to encourage migrant engagement with local government. This powerful exchange of ideas and experiences taught me much about the migrant experience in Ireland. The roll-out of a similar programme could be transformative in knowledge and capacity building for minority groups, and to encourage women candidates and young people.

Finally, I would like the members to consider the rental dimension for county councillors. My family home was sold by our landlord and we became homeless less than three years ago. I came to live in the area I now represent. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, county councillor to experience insecure tenancy or homelessness. Residents, quite reasonably, want a county councillor to live in the area they represent, yet a renting councillor may be forced to leave. Councillor tenants may face additional barriers, for example, finding necessary home security modifications difficult to arrange or to justify.

I believe that local democracy can flourish with boundaries and planned, inclusive policies, whether it be training, care, work hours, remuneration, the right to switch off or acknowledgement of our different living circumstances. I thank the committee for its attention and desire to build a 21st century local democracy with tools for success.

Mr. Guss O'Connell

A Chathaoirligh, tá áthas mór orm a bheith anseo inniú. I am delighted to be here today and I thank the committee for inviting us along to discuss the future of local government.

If we are looking at the landscape at present, we know that there is quite a lot of activity going on there. I agree with a lot of what my colleagues have said.

I also agree fully with the criticism that Ireland has an extremely centralised form of local government and, as a consequence, has a very poor form of local administration also. There are historical reasons for this, some of which are understandable, but as we now approach pre-Famine levels of population and have a very diverse population, and we operate in a multimedia environment, it is timely that real root and branch reform and decentralisation takes place.

It can be argued that at present quite a lot of bodies out there in the landscape claim to be part of local government. We have area committees, as we have discussed already. We do not have urban municipal districts as we do rural councils. This is a big disadvantage. There are SPCs, PPNs, LCDC, partnerships, LEADER programmes, local policing forums, drug task forces, Part 8, public consultation structures, ETBs, health forums and regional assemblies. In theory there are quite a lot of opportunities for people to engage. However, in the council it is the executive that exercises most of the limited powers available to local government and is ultimately responsible to the Minister. Although councillors do sit on many of these bodies, there is very little connection between what they do and what is needed in an overall context.

Councillors have lost a lot of the limited powers they had. There is a very poor response to councillors' motions from Ministers and Departments. The Part 8 system needs to be much more interactive with residents. Councillors should have an active voice in local planning issues. We had this but it was removed recently. Safety and protection for councillors needs to be put on a statutory basis.

From my engagement in working groups such as the Lord Mayor's committee for a directly elected mayor for Dublin prior to 2019, it is obvious that simple decentralisation to the regions would be skewed due to the sheer population on the east coast. While county integrity is important, and we must hang onto this, perhaps the unit of local government should be closer to the people. We have seen that the break up of County Dublin into three council areas has worked. When we add in Dublin city we find the county identity still holds, as we see, for example, in GAA loyalty. Therefore, a revamped municipal district approach may offer the best option for urban and rural-based communities.

We should focus on a bottom-up system whereby municipal districts are given responsibility to raise taxes and spend on local services, such as housing, parks, community centres, local area planning, culture and heritage, footpaths, traffic control, relevant bylaws and local environment. Municipal districts would operate in a directly-elected regional structure that would be responsible to raise and spend taxes for education, health, waste management, planning, policing, climate action and other such overarching services, which are best under regional control but determined through formal co-operation and consultation with constituent municipal districts. National government and Departments would be responsible for foreign policy, external relations, national laws, defence, formulating the national budget and co-ordination and support, not dictation to regions and municipal districts. The taxation system would have to be adjusted, so the taxes levied at local and regional level would be factored into corporate taxation, income taxation and all other taxes to include, obviously, an equalisation mechanism.

Applying the principle of subsidiarity means that responsibility, accountability and decision-making should be devolved as close as possible to the beneficiaries of what we are trying to do. I suggest that participative budgeting, as piloted by South Dublin County Council, should be developed with a view to building a more egalitarian, inclusive and just society whereby every person feels they are equal and has an opportunity to contribute and benefit by living in the area they choose. The specific policy committees and people's participative support system should be reformed, giving them a role in participative budgeting and a more independent and strengthened consultative voice overall.

The local electoral system should be reformed to provide for direct elections - on the same day - to regional councils, municipal districts, specific policy committees and people's participative networks, so that we see them all as part of a blanket approach towards ensuring the citizen is at the centre and is involved. Regional councils and municipal districts should have directly elected mayors with executive powers. All other elected members would be part-time, providing they had sufficient secretarial support. I can do an awful lot more if I have secretarial support than I can do on my own. After 33 years working as an elected representative, and the previous 30 years as an activist, I believe we in Ireland are at a crossroads. We seriously need to look at how we are structuring society in a way that people feel part of it. Otherwise most of us would recognise there is beginning to be drift away from democracy towards anarchy.

Ms Joanna Tuffy

I thank the Cathaoirleach and committee members for including me in the debate. I am surprised there are not more Senators here considering-----

An Cathaoirleach

These are the members of the Seanad Public Consultation Committee. If we had all of the Senators here and they all asked questions the witnesses would be here until next week.

Ms Joanna Tuffy

I know but I am sure they could come in and have a listen. I presume that was not prohibited, considering they all come looking for our votes at election time. I very much appreciate the Senators who are here and who are involved in this.

There is a lot of negative commentary about what it is like to be a politician. This in itself could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and put people off politics. I have been a TD, a Senator and a councillor. I have been honoured to be each of these things and have really enjoyed the roles. I loved being in the Seanad with the contribution that Senators can make to legislation. It is much less confrontational than the Dáil. It is the same in the council.

In all my years in politics, and I have been elected since 1999 with a small break, I have found being a councillor the most satisfying in terms of achievements and what I have put my mark on that has made life better for people in my community. We do not hear this but if we think about county development plans councillors have a say in the planning of their area. I have been at county development plan meetings where I have succeeded in persuading my fellow councillors to go along with my point of view. There has been a change in the room and in what the council subsequently did in terms of rezoning and other such issues. I could mention many other positive things. When I was deputy mayor I was honoured and I loved the role, with all of the people and diversity in our community that I experienced.

Last year on International Women's Day we had a cross-party panel of women councillors on South Dublin County Council. They spoke about the challenges and bad things that have happened to them but overwhelmingly every one of them said they loved being a councillor and they loved the role. Most women councillors on South Dublin County Council are running for election again. Very often we say things but we do not check the numbers or the facts. The number of women on South Dublin County Council has increased since 2019 via co-options. There is now one extra councillor and 40% of the councillors on South Dublin County Council are women. According to a document I read from the National Women's Council, this is a national trend. The percentage of women councillors in 2019 has increased through co-option since the last election. Ms Dowling mentioned that Labour Party councillor Alison Gilliland was not running.

Ms Gilliland has a fantastic record as a councillor and was previously Lord Mayor of Dublin city. She has been a councillor for ten years. That is a success story. Being an elected councillor is not necessarily, and was never supposed to be, about staying there forever. It has always been the case, going back 100 years, that some people might just serve one term, while other people might serve two and others might stay there forever. It just varies. It is not supposed to be this professional career. We need to remember that.

Public representatives in Scandinavian countries were the first to bring their babies into the parliamentary chamber. That is progress. It is not a bad thing, even if there should be childcare. Childcare workers, people in retail and catering, the staff here and council staff turn up in person. We have people complaining about coming to one statutory council meeting a month. Many other meetings are not statutory and can be done remotely but it is not too much to expect that people turn up for one council meeting, considering most other workers, many of whom are on the minimum wage, have to turn up in person, including carers and those who have children. I am on that side of the debate on remote meetings. I am not saying that none of them should be remote but council meetings should be in person.

The main issue in local government, and the AILG and Senator Malcolm Byrne have done very good work on this, is that we now have the lowest number of elected people per head of population at all levels. Other countries have more layers of democracy, with more elections and more councillors per head of population. That means they are closer to the people and less stretched. That is the biggest issue of all. Many councillors are running again in the next election. Many immigrants are running as Independents because they cannot get a foothold as so many incumbents are running. We did not increase the number of councillors since the most recent election, despite the huge increase in population and in the number of public servants and unelected political staffers. We want to keep the number of councillors down because we have a very antidemocratic discourse. As elected representatives, we need to push back against that.

Senator Victor Boyhan

The submissions were excellent. I was a councillor myself. I will start with Councillor Tuffy, who said that her happiest times were as a TD, councillor and Senator. I have been a councillor and am a Senator. I am not a TD. I do not aspire to be one and never will. I will say the same thing as Councillor Tuffy. What she said resonated clearly with me. My happiest time in politics was representing the people I grew up among and lived with. It is a great honour. If I were ever to be out of here, and I put people in Dún Laoghaire on notice, I would certainly be back for another round in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council because local government is a fantastic place to work. I fully hear and understand what Councillor Tuffy said.

I will take away three issues rather than go into specifics. The national forum on financing local government Councillor Lacey suggested is an excellent idea and one that we should follow. We all know Councillor Lacey. There is hardly a week goes by when I do not see his name on The Irish Times editorial and letters page. He is a great champion for local government. I say "Well done and keep going" to him. I would like to think a forum might be one of our key recommendations. Others, including Councillors Saul and Clark, raised the issue of part-time pay but full-time expectation. That is a key point. The full-time expectation of the electorate in respect of city and county councillors is an issue we need to address.

Clearly, we need to support councillors. If they are feeling vulnerable, victimised or intimidated that has to be stamped out. That works two ways. We also heard from local government staff who feel under pressure within the local government system. We also hear that from councillors. We need to address that through a proper code of conduct and grievance procedures. Again, I would like to see that as part of our recommendations.

The most important challenge was touched on by Councillor Colgan when she talked about the engagement with the AILG, councillors and others in this House, and how that has not always been followed through on by elected Members. It must be remembered, and I am always very conscious of this when I stand here, that city and county councillors elect the majority of Senators. That is an important point to make.

The challenge that was talked about is the Planning and Development Bill. That Bill is coming to the House, possibly next month. It is in excess of several hundred pages. I will give the assurance, which will also come from others, that there will be very substantial amendments in support of what councillors and their organisation have been asking for. We will put Senators through the hoop and make them stand up and debate the issues and vote for them. That is accountability. We can talk about accountability in our council chambers, but we also have to have transparency and accountability within our Seanad and the Oireachtas. I again thank our guests for their contributions.

Senator Mark Wall

I thank everybody for their contributions. I thank my colleague, Councillor Lacey, for all he has done for the Labour Party. He was first elected in 1993. Today is not the first time I heard about his passion for local government. He made six points. Senator Boyhan has taken the one point I wanted to put forward, namely, the form and financing of local government. Across all our conversations over that period it has been the one issue that has come up time and time again. It is now time we put that at the centre of this conversation. The Cathaoirleach nodded in agreement with Senator Boyhan's proposal, which I second. That is an issue we can actually work on and take from all the contributions of members at our meetings on this matter.

Councillors Clark, Saul and Lynch spoke about full-time councillors. That is where we need to go. That is the job. We all talked being switched on 24-7, including Councillor Hagin Meade. That is the demand on a councillor. Social media has demanded that. We are all aware that we are getting called out time and time again on social media if we do not get back to somebody within an hour or a day. That is what is happening. Those are the demands being put on councillors at present. There is an argument, a little like that about hybrid meetings, regarding what happens to those who want to continue in full-time work. We have to accommodate those people as well, but the time has come for full-time councillors in this country. We must look at what is happening in other countries and replicate that. Ireland has to have full-time councillors because in essence it is a full-time job.

Councillors Colgan and O'Connell spoke about planning, which is something that is dear to my heart. Senator Boyhan spoke about the planning Bill. I have spoken to Councillor Lacey at length about it. It is something that needs to be challenged in the House. We look forward to the Bill coming before us in the Seanad. We will be looking at that.

Councillor Donnelly raised the matter of a code of conduct. That is essential for all political parties. It is something we will look at during our Seanad term and in the report we will put out.

I also thank my colleague, Councillor Tuffy, who has worked tirelessly for our party over a long period as a TD and Senator, as was said. She brings great experience to our party in that regard. She mentioned Councillor Gilliland. I acknowledge all those councillors who are no longer there. Councillor Tuffy is right that some people just do not want to run any more, but it is also important to speak to them. The time has come to get their feelings about what they offered and what they look forward to.

I again thank everybody. Full-time councillors and the forum are issues, as is the planning Bill. We all look forward to that Bill coming to the House.

An Cathaoirleach

I am glad someone is looking forward to it.

Senator Frances Black

I thank all the councillors for their contributions. They truly are invaluable. In listening to them all, there is a palpable sense of frustration. There is no doubt, from what they said, that people get involved in local politics because they are passionate about their communities and really want to make change. It is unfortunate that councillors can be hampered at every turn, which is nearly an insult to their dedication and enthusiasm. Sometimes, I feel I am copying everything Senator Boyhan says. I believe the national forum is a great idea. Full-time councillors are absolutely vital. The planning Bill will be challenged. Engagement with the AILG and LAMA is vital.

I will ask a couple of questions, if that is okay. Much has been said during these meetings about the negative impact the local government reforms of 2014 had on local democracy. I would like to hear some of our guests' views on that. The issue of the safety and well-being of public representatives has come into sharp focus, given the increasingly brazen abuse and threats emanating from a very vocal antidemocratic far-right fringe. What do councillors think needs to be done to protect public representatives from intimidation? That is essential to preserve our democratic process. I will touch on what Councillor Donnelly said. I am very sorry to hear about what happened to her. I wanted to say that to her. It must be very difficult for her when she does not feel she is heard in that situation. The Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, has published a code of conduct for councillors. I am interested in hearing from her about it and what her thoughts are on that. Does she think it is adequate?

I sincerely thank the witnesses for the amazing work they do. I travel around the country and meet councillors all the time. The amount of work they do on the ground blows my mind. It is truly inspiring.

Senator Joe O'Reilly

I would have been slightly disturbed and it would have affected the quality of my day a little to hear Barry Saul say that he was enjoying sitting on the seats here. However, I do not think he will be going on the Labour Panel, so that has left me a little more comfortable again.

I welcome back to the Oireachtas my great friend and our former distinguished colleague, Joanna Tuffy. It is great she is back here.

I lived all this for 20 years, so I know all that the witnesses are talking about. The pay and conditions have improved immensely and there has been much done recently, and that has been acknowledged in contributions. However, it occurred to me that has to be watched because the option to go full time for those who want to should be there, or at least that they could manage it. Another thing that occurs to me that there something needs to be done - perhaps at wage agreement level, social contract level or social partnership level with Government and unions - to incentivise employers to facilitate a councillor in their ranks and be proud that they have the councillor. Many would be proud a councillor is in their ranks but if they are not so proud, there should be an incentive for them to co-operate with the councillor's schedule and so on. A decent employer should do it anyway, with the flexi-world we live in. However, if they do not, something should be there.

On the broad point of social media, we have all been victims of that at some time and in some form or another. It behoves people in here to try to deal with that on many levels.

If I may be indulged because it is my own county, I wish to express my sincere condolences for our esteemed colleague, Senator Sharon Keogan, on the passing of her uncle, Fr. Jim Brady, who was an exemplary individual.

An Cathaoirleach

On behalf of Seanad Éireann, I express our sympathies to Senator Keogan. We are deeply saddened by her loss.

Senator Gerard P. Craughwell

I appreciate the Cathaoirleach facilitating me. I am not member of the committee but I am a Member of the Seanad and I depend on councillors, just like every other Member of the Seanad. I was never a city or county councillor, but I wish to address the issue of pay. I first brought up the issue of pay in 2015, when I first came in here. I cannot for the life of me understand why councillors’ allowance is regarded as a taxable pay. On getting elected, I get a salary, an allowance and my expenses – telephone, computer and everything – supplied. What makes councillors different? Why is the allowance they are paid regarded as taxable and insurable? Surely to God the money they are paid is money they need to engage with their communities. We have to take this up. The money that is paid to councillors should be paid to them to do the work they do. I get thousands of envelopes allocated to me that I never use because I do not engage with local communities. It is not my job as a national politician. We have too many politicians in this country who want to be county councillors and Members or potential Members of the Dáil and Seanad. You are one or the other. Do the job you are paid to do. I people have come to my house. Councillor Saul lives in my constituency. I love his signs, which are all over the place, on public meetings coming up in the near future. I will not attend on this occasion. Councillors Barry Saul, Deirdre Donnelly and Anne Colgan are there within my community to do the work at local level, so why would I engage with it? Why would I involve myself in it? I have enough to do in the Seanad.

We need a reform of the way the political system works. We need powers sent back to county councillors. There is too much centralisation. Legislation has passed through this House - no blame to any of my colleagues. I am answerable only to you and God, but my colleagues are answerable to their parties. The Civil Service is ramming through legislation that is limiting councillors’ powers more and more every year. We saw the policing Bill and we will see the planning legislation coming through soon, as well as other legislation. They will eventually leave councillors with nothing. The three sections of government – local government, the Dáil and the Seanad - must come together to curtail the power of the Civil Service and make it more answerable to elected personnel.

I thank everyone for their time.

Senator Sharon Keogan

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the words about my uncle Jim. He lived a life of service, just a we as politicians do. He was a Kiltegan missionary and part of the famous Gunnar Brady family, who would have been very well known in the football circles but also in the political circles through Fianna Fáil. Uncle Danny served as a county councillor for Fianna Fáil for almost six decades and now his son is the chair of Cavan County Council. Uncle Jim served as a Kiltegan missionary throughout Africa and he gave a life of service to his faith and his country.

That is what we do too and that is why I came up today. I was in a briefing this morning when I got the word on the EU migration pact.

I hold the county councillors in this country to be the most valuable cogs in the wheel when it comes to democracy. They are the first people to know when something is going in our communities. They are the first people who people reach out to. People do not normally reach out to the Senators or their TDs rather it is the councillors. With my Independent colleagues, I have fought constantly in here to make sure councillors are properly remunerated and properly paid for the job they do. We have much work to do but we have come a long way since I came in here. We were at €17,500 when I joined the Seanad in 2020. We have secured more pay. There is a long way to go, but I will keep on that fight. I value each and every councillor throughout this country.

That is all I have to say. I will continue to be an advocate for councillors and I am glad to be here today to support them.

An Cathaoirleach

We were supposed to finish at 12.30 p.m. but I am anxious that people may wish to contribute. Senator Cassells can come in now or I can bring him in at the end.

Senator Shane Cassells

I thank everyone for their contributions and service. We have to remember that everyone here today is a public representative.

In respect of the points made by Dr. Clark and others with regard to full-time expectations, in the previous session we held with all of the former Ministers who had held the brief of local government over the past three decades, Noel Dempsey, who, in many ways, was one of the most reforming in some of the introductions he made, made the point for full-time local representatives. However, the modus operandi of why he did so was not just from the point of view of pay, which others have mentioned, but from the point of view of the time required now by local government councillors purely for reading material to be au fait with the legislative requirements being handed down by central government. I was first elected in 1999 and I was a councillor for 17 years. I still look at the monthly agenda for county council meetings held in my county to be au fait with what is going on and I see the number of documents sent down from central government on the agenda. If councillors are to do their job properly, the amount of reading to prepare for that is hugely significant. I note the amount of reading required if we are to do our jobs properly in the Seanad. The call that was being made in respect of asking former Ministers what they would do in respect of the suggestions coming forth in this panel was to do primarily with time and giving local councillors the time to do their job properly. I do not want pre-empt the report but I strongly advocate we consider that extremely seriously. When we meet with the party leaders of all parties, we should make that point to them.

Finally, while many of the points echoed today have been reciprocated by other councillors from around the country, Dublin is unique. Joanna Tuffy made the point in respect of the lowest amount of representation in Ireland vis-à-vis the rest of Europe. When I was in the Dáil in the last term, I brought in a local government Bill seeking the reinstatement of town councils.

It was not applicable to Dublin, in terms of what happened in the past, with the exception of Balbriggan town commission. Looking at Balbriggan now, it is one of the largest towns in Ireland. Would it not be amazing if in an area near where Councillor Henchy lives, there was a statutory council for such a large area? Next door is Swords, which is another of the largest towns in Ireland. Representation in an area the size of Dublin, in respect of both its geography and population, warrants special attention, and the same is true in many other places in Ireland, because of the changes in national policy that are moving Ireland from a rural-based country to an urbanised one, particularly on the eastern coast. I would like to hear the views of representatives from Dublin on that point.

An Cathaoirleach

I will call representatives in sequence. Lunch is waiting and our next session will start at 1.30 p.m. There will be ten minutes for Senators to get lunch. We look forward to our guests joining us.

Mr. Dermot Lacey

I thank Senators for their questions. I am a full-time councillor on part-time pay, but I am happy to be a councillor because I enjoy it. I will be asking the people of Pembroke in six or seven weeks' time to re-elect me. I dislike the system but I do not dislike being a councillor.

Senator Black asked about the 2014 Bill. I am one of the very few nerds who read all 417 pages, and I remember there were that many pages, of the Putting People First document. In those 417 pages, there was one additional power, which, word for word, was the power to locate and relocate bus stops. Believe it or not, when that Bill became an Act, the Minister had taken that out. The 2014 Act was an attack on democracy. It is a disastrous Act and in my view, it should be totally taken out. There was no additional benefit to councillors.

On social media abuse, I can take it. I give it and I can take it but I know some other people find it a bit harder.

On the pay issue, we should go back to the Moorhead report. I had big question marks in respect of much of the content of the Moorhead report because it was factually wrong all over the place. When the report opened by thanking the officials in the Department of housing and local government for their assistance, the credibility of the report went out the window because I have never seen them help local government.

I will make the same point as Senator Craughwell made previously. We have outsourced the governance of Ireland to quangos. Unless we, as public representatives, collectively change that, we are losing our democratic structures. I ask committee members to ask themselves the following questions. They do not have to answer in public but they should ask themselves who are the chairmen of the HSE, the National Transport Authority, NTA, Transport Infrastructure Ireland or any of the other quangos to which we have given away power. Unless the committee members tackle that issue, we will no longer live in a democracy, which is one of my biggest fears.

Dr. Michael Clark

I made a point about how we deal with ourselves at meetings and organise speaking time, so I will rigorously try to speak for less than two minutes. This meeting has been symbolic of the issue. Everyone here, with some notable exceptions, has spoken for longer than allocated and our gracious chairperson has given us leniency that has allowed the meeting to overrun. That is what has happened at every council meeting I have attended in the past five years. If we are to take ourselves seriously as elected representatives, we have to be more rigorous when it comes to time-keeping. I would not accept going over time, as we have all done, in one of the debates I run for first-year students in schools. I will try to limit my contribution to two minutes.

As regards councillors in meetings, we are the most time poor people in the room. We are the least well-paid people, and definitely the least well-read people, in the room, but are the most accountable people in the room. That is a scenario that cannot continue into the future because there is a disconnect.

I was particularly intrigued by Senator Joe O'Reilly's idea. I am lucky that my employer facilitates my work as a county councillor. I like being a teacher and county councillor. When I talk about pay and expectations, perhaps expectations could be lowered and pay does not have to rise. It is a two-way street. I like the fact that I am more connected to human beings by my work than some people in the Oireachtas - and excluding anyone in this room - who are inside ivory towers. I like the connection but I cannot continue to sustain it in the long term.

As regards the local powers Act of 2014, there were few town councils in Dublin already. Dublin was already under-represented at local government level so the changes in Dublin were not massive. That is a matter which Councillor Colgan raised. If we had a level of employer flexibility, we could allow people to be both public representatives and full-time workers in other walks of life. It would be a big decision for all of us to become full-time politicians. I will leave it there and thank the committee for the time.

Ms Anne Colgan

In thanking Senators for their responses, I will make the point that what we are talking about today is, in many ways, power and influence and where they rest. It might be interesting to look at the resources and budget available to the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, and to contrast them with the resources and budget available to the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG. That would be an interesting exercise.

One question that did not come up during the meeting but which has been in the ether is that of culture. What is the culture of local government and, in particular, what is the culture of the Department? Because councillors never engage with civil servants, they are invisible people who see each other in particular ways. That is a question of culture.

I will make one further point that may not occur to people when considering the impact of the loss of reserve functions. It relates to the higher education Bill. Why would we worry about councillors being taken from the boards of third level colleges? If we look at the advertisements to replace councillors on those boards, the requirements are completely technocratic and relate to finances. Colleges are meant to be in, and reaching out to, communities. Where now is the voice of the community and the educational needs of local communities? That is something we have lost even if we did not give it a lot of thought. The whole notion of power and influence needs to change.

Ms Deirdre Donnelly

I thank, first of all, my fellow councillors. Some really interesting points have been made. I was a member of the assembly on the directly elected mayor and I know Councillor Saul made some great points and summed up the situation. I will not go any further in that regard.

I appreciate the kind comments of Senators. I will go back to some of the points made by Senator Black. My issue with duty of care is that if a member of the staff of my council turns up at a conference and something happens, whether it is an injury, an assault or whatever else, he or she is covered and looked after. Who pays if, as happened in my council recently, a stone is thrown through a councillor's window if he or she does not agree with some people on an issue in the area? I have had medical bills and still go to counselling. Who is going to say that public representatives are not going to be able to continue if this is what they are up against?

Senator Joe O'Reilly mentioned social media. There needs to be one consistent way in which the Garda deals with complaints. We are talking about new legislation being introduced in respect of the harassment of public representatives. If someone receives explicit material online, the same process should apply throughout the country. Two high profile women representatives have over the past year or two had horrific experiences. Both offenders were brought to court and my understanding is that they received suspended sentences. What is the point if they are going to get away with it? We need to send out a message in that regard.

I agree with Councillor Tuffy that some women leave for personal reasons. It is great that women get elected and serve time on a council even if they are not there forever. However, I know that people are leaving because of safety issues. Weirdos online is one thing, and I have had abuse from such people, but I must say that more than the injuries, it was an embarrassing situation for me, as an elected member, to have another elected member behaving that way in front of other councillors. Looking at the CCTV footage afterwards, a councillor was laughing and thought it was funny while others turned away.

That was in front of people. This is what I am talking about. We need a code of conduct to tackle this type of misogyny.

Senator Black mentioned SIPO. I have gone through the code of conduct on several occasions. I think we are all obliged to read it as councillors. It is great it is there in relation to conflicts and ethics regarding business dealings a councillor may have in respect of where council contracts are going out to tender, political donations and getting the declaration signed every year. SIPO plays a great role in ensuring there are ethics and standards within the political system but there is nothing there in relation to misconduct, as in respect of sexual misconduct or harassment.

I will give an example. Councillors are in trouble if we do not return our declarations in time. We would be in trouble, and probably named and shamed, if there were to be any slight conflict of interest with ourselves or a family member or perhaps something regarding a company or a contract going out to tender in your council and you did not declare it. If councillors assault or harass someone, though, they can continue to do what they are doing with absolute impunity. There seems to be no process now for dealing with this issue. I ask everyone here at the committee to consider what I am saying and I am perfectly prepared to talk to people individually or to send them more documentation. I again thank everyone for this session today.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Councillor Donnelly. I call Councillor Mark Lynch.

Mr. Mark Lynch

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I will touch on two points that were raised. Senator Black referred to safety and well-being, and in the context of social media as well. I am lucky enough, being a 6 ft tall male, that I do not tend to get any physical issues on the doors or at least not yet. I know this might be a little beyond the remit of this committee but social media is probably what I think is one of the most dangerous vehicles for undermining local democracy and democracy in general. This is because it is possible to have untruths, lies and incitement appearing pretty much freely now. I see this being a major issue in future and something that needs to be tackled at some level. We are making strides in this regard but this does need to happen.

The second point was made by Senator O'Reilly in respect of employee and employer situations. I empathise with this aspect. As I mentioned in my contribution, the first opportunity I had to become a councillor, I was left under no uncertain impression by my employer that it was just not going to happen. Ultimately, then, when the second opportunity came, I had to give up that job to take on this role. In hindsight, when I look back at it now dispassionately, I realise I could not have done both roles and done either justice. I would not have done both well considering the amount of work involved in what was my full-time job then and in the role of councillor. I do not know how we can square this circle. It can depend a lot on the jobs, but this certainly was an issue for me.

I also agree on what was said regarding brevity and time. As I think I got in under the four minutes on my first contribution, I am going to sit down now and get back another two minutes so we can all get to lunch. I thank the committee.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Councillor Lynch. I call Councillor Hagin Meade.

Ms Lyn Hagin Meade

Something that struck me was the point raised about safety and well-being. I would like to focus on the well-being part. Many people have spoken about having second jobs that they also do alongside their part-time role. I wonder how many hours a week this makes in total for work and where the work-life balance is in this context. Perhaps something the committee can consider is where this culture of work-life balance is at in terms of being a councillor and how this issue can be addressed for all councillors in respect of the hours they work, how safe this is for their health and the well-being of themselves and their families. I thank the committee.

Mr. Guss O'Connell

Many sensible things are being said here. I am going for the more radical approach. I believe we need to take a root-and-branch approach. This is why I would say the day of the county council really needs to be examined. We need to look at a different model. We have inherited this one from the British and it has served its time. What Councillor Colgan said there was very apt. She said that when we are elected on 7 June and go back, all of a sudden there will be a them-and-us situation. The only them-and-us as far as I am concerned are the officials on one side and the elected members on the other.

The side of things concerns being part-time versus full-time in a role. The full-time people, as far as I am concerned, are the professionals trained to do a certain job. They are meant to be responsible to us. If the origin of politics is on a voluntary basis, then I believe we need to be able to balance this with having an income we can live on. When I am talking about being part-time, I am talking about having a real job that is half-time or maybe three-quarter-time. I would not, though, like us to end up in a situation where the only people in the council chambers making decisions are those who have given up whatever other jobs they had, and they are in there, however they got in there or whatever their qualifications. This is not to cast aspersions on anybody I have ever served with or currently serve with at local government level or those who may get re-elected in June.

Politics is quite a different thing to saying we are going to put you in there and you are going to be working full-time. There is a balance to be struck, and I think this might come about if we were to organise things quite differently than they are now. I refer to the example of the area partnerships, the LEADER programme and so on. Some people call them quangos, but I do not like this term and do not use it. These other bodies have been put in there to do very good work. If they were responsible to the local municipal district, I think we would be going much further towards meeting people and serving them as volunteers where they are while getting remuneration for doing that, because it does take an awful lot of commitment. You learn a lot on a job that you can then apply to the role of councillor.

Ms Joanna Tuffy

I sometimes have disagreements with Councillor O'Connell and we have good debates, but today I agree absolutely 100% with what he said. I do not think the answer here is to have almost 1,000 full-time local councillors but to have more councillors and smaller units, a bit like what Senator Cassells said. When Dr. Aodh Quinlivan, an expert on local government, in the context of the predecessor of the AILG, looked at the issue of town councils, it was found that they were very efficient. Having smaller units of councils is more efficient.

It is extremely important as well that councils be representative. We have bus drivers on our councils, as well as carers, businesspeople, people who work for NGOs and a whole cross-section of the community. If we brought in full-time councillors, it would change the nature of local government and community representation and it would be a very bad move. It would be very costly and, in the long term, probably unpopular and unsustainable. I therefore very much do not agree that there should be full-time councillors.

An Cathaoirleach

The leas-chathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Councillor Dowling, has indicated she wishes to come back in.

Ms Eva Dowling

I will be brief. It has been great to hear the debate on hybrid meetings continue and contributions on the topic coming from councillors across the whole Dublin region. To come back to the point made by Councillor Tuffy regarding having one meeting a month or a year facilitated totally in person, we have had this debate in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Why would we do this? Would it be to combat people taking advantage of a system? Every system is open to exploitation. If a councillor is going to take advantage of a system, it is not up to us to police it. Ultimately, it is the members of the electorate who will hold those councillors accountable.

If the intention is to host a better meeting, then I would suggest using the carrot rather than the stick. At our last AGM, our then cathaoirleach, Councillor Mary Hanafin, wrote to all councillors asking us all to attend in person and 38 out of 40 councillors did so. One councillor could not attend due to severe morning sickness. As a woman, if you miss your vote at your AGM because of severe morning sickness or, as in my case, if I have missed the county development plan meetings because I was breast-feeding my child, you just quietly resign from the council. This is a much bigger problem. What problem is it that we wish to solve here? The problem that having hybrid meetings solves is one of the most fundamental problems facing the future of local democracy. We need to look at this context and see what problem we are trying to solve here. I thank the committee.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank everyone for their contributions. It is no surprise to us that not everybody agrees on everything. This is the beauty of democracy. We are here to discuss all the issues. The ones raised regarding harassment on social media are some of the most pressing. Social media has been the tipping point for many people.

The power is being stripped away, and the agency is taking many of the roles councillors have. This experiment in democracy is 126 years of local government and just over 100 years of our national democracy. We are three generations into it, but it is under threat from social media as a platform for people to undermine the democratic institutions of the State and the public representatives who fulfil that most important of functions. We will be taking all of those issues into account and asking the party leaders, the secretaries general of the different parties and groupings and the Independents to consider all of the contributions and draft recommendations in order that we can look forward to ensuring that we strengthen local democracy into the future. I thank all of those present for their contributions.

Sitting suspended at 1.01 p.m. and resumed at 1.30 p.m.

An Cathaoirleach

On behalf of the committee I would like to welcome representative organisations, public representatives, former public representatives and members of the public to the afternoon session of the committee's discussion on the future of local democracy. In particular, I welcome from the Fórsa union, Mr. Richy Carrothers, head of local government, local services and municipal divisions; Mr. Michael Whyms, the cathaoirleach of Fórsa's local government and local services division; and Ms Maura Cahalan, assistant general secretary. From the Public Participation Networks, PPN, Secretariat Network, I welcome Mr. Stephen Rourke, independent facilitator of the network and Mr. Donal O'Shea from Laois PPN Secretariat. From the Irish delegation to the Committee of the Regions, I welcome Councillor Michael Murphy. The Association of Irish Regions is represented by Councillor Pádraig McEvoy and Mr. Kevin Lynch, senior planner and assistant director.

They are all most welcome to Seanad Éireann today. I wish to draw their attention to the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue your remarks and it is imperative that you comply with any such direction. Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges a person outside the Houses or an official, either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. The aforementioned is read out before all committees as part of our standard procedures and is not specific to this committee.

We are also joined today by the cathaoirleach of Roscommon County Council, Councillor John Keogh and by councillors Tony Fitzgerald and Peter Flynn. Members of the public joining us include Mr. Harry Deane and Mr. Peter Horgan. Finally, I welcome former councillors Mr. Walter Lacey from Carlow and Mr. Seán O'Grady from Kerry.

I want to begin by thanking my colleagues for being here, and I now call on Fórsa, if Mr. Richy Carrothers would like to make the first contribution.

Mr. Richy Carrothers

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the invitation that was extended to Fórsa ahead of this important discussion on the future of local democracy. Fórsa is a trade union representing more than 85,000 members. It represents members in the public sector as well as the commercial sector, State enterprises, some private companies and the community and voluntary sector. With regard to this debate, we have more than 12,000 members working across the 31 city and county councils. They work in professions including clerical, administration, management, technical, professional and also as general operatives across the greater Dublin area.

Local government represents the greatest interface between citizens and the State. It touches on every aspect of our daily lives and affects every citizen, young and old alike. It affects our schools, homes and public parks, and it is in our work, play and general recreation.

Local government is the greatest and most underused resource. It connects with our daily lives and impacts on everyone who lives and works in Ireland. Our network of local services and amenities are the very fabric of our society. They are the roots that bind our community together, and our integrated network of autonomous local authorities is uniquely positioned as the most direct and immediate democratic mechanism for managing our society, both economically and socially. Yet, our local government has never been fully utilised or given the authority or support to fulfil its enormous potential.

Austerity, privatisation, executive direction and centralisation have hollowed out our public services and stripped local authorities and communities of their democratic power. Ireland now has the worst level of local representation and the weakest local government of any country in Europe. Local government represents the greatest interrelationship between the citizens and the State, as I said, and it must be protected, promoted and strengthened.

Today, our local government is actively being degraded. Essential public services such as housing, water, energy and waste are being undermined, and trust in our system of government is being eroded day by day. At the height of the financial crisis, 10,000 jobs were lost in the local government sector, the greatest proportion of jobs in any sector in the public service. We believe the correlation between the loss of these posts and the centralisation, loss of services to communities, democratic deficits and the perception of disempowerment among communities can be tracked. Despite the undeniable societal contribution of our local democracy, the sector has faced many challenges. Changes in population demographics, public spending, staffing levels and public perception of public services continue to present an ever-changing landscape. What we do know is that this local government sector can be incredibly agile and responsive to new and emerging challenges. The Covid community response spearheaded by local authorities is an impressive case in point. Local authority workers committed to the delivery of excellent public services came forward at the height of the pandemic and volunteered to establish community forums around the country to help the vulnerable and people who benefitted from that community response by providing essential non-emergency and non-medical support and essential services to our communities.

However, the sector is also dealing with the fallout of the financial crisis. The loss of the 10,000 jobs I spoke about, which occurred at the height of the financial crisis, has resulted in deep and long-term problems of grade drift and blurring of the demarcation of duties and responsibilities. This continues to cause deep and significant impact on recruitment and retention of local authority workers. In a wide-ranging survey of local government workers that Fórsa is launching next week, 40% of respondents said they were searching for a new job.

All over Europe, privatised local services are being brought back under direct local authority provision because publicly-provided services are usually better in quality, better value for money and more environmentally sustainable. Fórsa believes that it is time to bring power closer to the people by creating decent local employment through the direct provision of local authority services. It is time to reform Irish local government to reflect the European principle of subsidiarity.

Local government can be an important source of economic development in providing quality jobs while local authorities across Europe are playing a leading role in transitioning to low-carbon renewable energy. We need to build an Irish local democracy and citizen participation to build strong local communities based on good jobs, decent incomes and to address the climate emergency.

Fórsa would say that our democracy has been eroded by more than a decade of austerity, which cut budgets and slashed council staffing by a quarter; the centralisation of services like water, driving licences and higher education grants; the privatisation of services like refuse collection and housing; and excessive executive direction and new management processes that have increase bureaucratic powers at the expense of political representativeness.

Fórsa believes that there are a number of reforms that would enhance local government, covering water, waste, housing and energy services, and these include: further legislative changes to facilitate the directly elected mayors with real power and funding; reimagined local democracy underpinned by citizen engagement; increased revenue and funding powers with parallel systems of accountability and transparency to move the percentage of local authority-managed public spending towards the European average; an immediate end to the outsourcing of council housing maintenance, and a shift to a new local authority-led housing model; stronger regulation of wastewater, to ensure that every household has access to an affordable waste disposal service; a constitutional referendum on the right to water, which should enshrine that water and wastewater services remain in public ownership and control forever; and importantly, based on what we heard last night, an investment in local authority environmental and sustainable energy infrastructure and staff to facilitate the maximum use of the SEAI better energy programmes.

The nature of our society is rapidly changing. Technology, environmental crises and social change mean that the way we work and live is constantly evolving. Strengthening Ireland's local authorities offers us the unique opportunity to establish a new and better system of local government, one that truly reflects and represents the changing nature of our diverse society. We need to strengthen local government as an effective force to improve local services and public provision to our communities. We in Fórsa have scoped out opportunities for new and renewed local provision, including insourced models on local lead and international best practice. As we move closer to the local elections on 7 June, there is a real opportunity for a changed and improved system of local government and services, and we want to see decentralisation of decision-making.

There are far-right forces at work who are exploiting and wedging long-standing problems in health and housing to sow the seeds of hate and division in our communities. Racism has no place in Irish society, and we in the trade union movement stand in solidarity with those who have escaped conflict, oppression, climate and economic catastrophe to come to Ireland in search of a safe and better life. We call on political parties and candidates to be strong in the forthcoming local elections and stand in solidarity with refugees and asylum seekers against right-wing, reactionary forces whipping up hysteria and hatred. No one should game vulnerable people for their own political gain.

We have a vision for enhanced public provision. Strong local government, which provides localised, efficient and effective services, is the cornerstone of our healthy democracy. We are proposing an enhanced role for local government in effective service provision, decision-making and rebuilding the confidence of the people in local democracy, while we must acknowledge that society is rapidly changing and that how we live our lives is constantly evolving.

Finally - to cut it short - we understand and trust that the system of government is essentially in the delivery of core public services but years of austerity and financial crises have eroded the people's trust in government and seen the rise of extreme and populist movements across the world. By strengthening and protecting local government, we would empower citizens to play a more direct role in shaping communities and tackling the issues that affect them. Importantly, strengthening local government is the only enduring way of reclaiming trust in our institutions and system of government in our society. With the help of the committee, we can improve local services for our communities and future generations to come.

We call on the committee to build with us a better system of local government and local services. The people demand and deserve a local government system that is fair, open, transparent and well-funded, and a system of local democracy that is connected, accessible and accountable. Community enhancement and empowerment are the key ingredients to achieving improved local democracy. I have 34 seconds left, so that is okay. Gabhaim buíochas leis an gcoiste.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Carrothers. That is very impressive timekeeping, and I thank him for his contribution. I now call Mr. Stephen Rourke, independent facilitator at the PPN Secretariat Network.

Mr. Stephen Rourke

I thank the committee for the invitation. I am the independent facilitator of the PPN secretariat. I am accompanied by my colleague Donal O'Shea. He is the Laois PPN representative on the secretariat. Our network comprises 31 members, one from each of the 31 PPNs in Ireland. As members know, these correspond directly with the 31 local authorities. We would like to take about five minutes each to provide some information on PPNs, their role in the local democracy process, and the future development of representative and participative democracy.

PPNs were set up in 2014, ten years ago, following on directly from the community and voluntary forums, which many members might be familiar with and which already existed in local authority areas. There are generally three main focuses to the work of PPNs. The first is participation and representation, the aim being to ensure as many local community groups, residents' associations and environmental groups as possible are members of the PPN. Through that process, there is a mechanism to nominate and elect people from PPN member groups to local authority bodies like strategic policy committees, joint policing committees, local community safety partnerships, as they are now called, and local community development committees.

The second role is networking and information-sharing. Some of the PPNs produce excellent newsletters. The one in County Cavan comes out every week and the county council asked that all its employees be included on the mailing list because a similar type of newsletter did not exist in the county. With regard to what is happening in local authority areas, PPNs should have a role.

The third role is training and capacity-building. Many opportunities are presented, through relationships with organisations such as The Wheel and the Carmichael centre, for local community groups and voluntary organisations to be upskilled in various areas of interest to them.

There has been a significant increase in the number of PPN member groups over the past few years. There are approximately 21,000 groups affiliated to PPNs. Some PPNs, such as in Galway and Tipperary, have over 1,000 local groups affiliated. Recently, I have been doing some work with the PPN in County Meath. Last week, its number had gone up from 422 to 650, which is a 50% increase in two years. There is significant interest. It is estimated that over 600,000 citizens are involved in the work of the 21,000 PPN member groups. Some are quite large, like large GAA clubs, and others are a bit smaller.

With regard to local democracy, the PPN model of participatory democracy is quite unique in Europe. It is some achievement to be able to put in place a process through which perhaps 800, 900 or 1,000 member groups in a particular local authority area can – hey presto – can end up with two people in the SPC environment, three in planning and four in housing, in addition to people in LCDCs, county childcare committees, Local Link transport committees and the rest of it. Across the Border, there is nothing like that. I understand subcommittees of local authorities and district councils in Northern Ireland not only do not have any civil society representation from the social inclusion or community and voluntary sector but also do not have trade union representatives, trade association representatives or farmer representatives. The Republic's PPN model is quite special and unique.

There is great potential in trying to grow and develop PPNs over the next ten years. Last week, a letter was issued by the Ombudsman, Mr. Ger Deering, stating that he admires the excellent work being done by PPNs in building a network of community, social inclusion and environmental groups that work at local level and that he believes their role in empowering and assisting groups to participate in society and local decision-making is very important and relevant to his work in the Ombudsman's office.

Let me highlight what I believe to be the three main issues or challenges. First, there needs to be more equality and mutual respect within the membership of local authority bodies such as SPCs. Feedback from some PPN members suggests PPN representatives are not allowed to bring motions to meetings or add agenda items in the way elected councillors can. That is not the same in all counties; in some, PPN representatives are treated with equality. I hope that a key document that needs to be produced after the June elections, the SPC scheme document, which is produced by every local authority, will highlight the need for members, particularly PPN representatives, to be treated more equally in terms of being able to raise motions and agenda items.

Second, there is a need to move beyond the tokenism phase of participatory democracy to real empowerment. In a document that has been circulated, there is a reference to ladder participation, which goes from non-participation at zero to full empowerment and citizen participation at ten. We are at four or five, which is tokenism. We need to move beyond the mantra of a number of PPN members, namely that they are not being taken seriously, to the mantra that they are bringing about real and positive change. On paper, it looks good that civic society is represented at local authority level, but there is still a job of work to be done to address the impact of PPN representatives at local authority level.

Finally, there needs to be more awareness and understanding of PPNs, perhaps at executive level in local authorities and among local councillors. In the future, representative democracy through the ballot box and the participative democracy through PPNs can work more effectively in making local government better.

Mr. Donal O'Shea

Tá an-áthas orm bheith anseo. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a thabhairt leis na Seanadóirí as ucht an seans labhairt leo.

In addition to being the Laois representative on the national secretariat, I am representing colleagues on the national advisory group. I acknowledge the commitment of colleagues in each PPN, particularly the input of the national secretariat, which has worked on various developments over the years. Ten years after the reform of the local authority Act of 2014, there is a consensus that the aspiration to empower citizens is not being realised as it was meant to be. In this regard, recurring themes include concerns about the required authenticity and limited opportunities to influence policy; excessive central control, with far too many gatekeepers; and fragmentation of the national and local authorities. The critical need is for the establishment of an independent national structure for the PPNs. It is urgent at this stage and it would be in keeping with the findings of the Mazars report. In this respect, I have outlined the need for the findings of Crowe consultants, produced on behalf of the Department of Community and Rural Development, to be shared with the Cabinet prior to ministerial sign-off in June of this year. Given a very modest request for resources, this will facilitate much greater input from grassroots level and reinforce the principles of open government. Former colleagues say that open government is not working as it ought to but that there is considerable potential.

I started as a social inclusion representative. I have sent in a personal submission to outline the consequences for a person with a physical disability, a rheumatic condition, who must wait ten-odd years for the high-end medication Humira. I am now on this. It helps but there has been a trail of destruction at so many levels. At local level, the alignment of policy and activation of funding streams, particularly through the likes of LEADER and The Wheel, would help. I shared a link from another sufferer, Amanda Geard, who, according to the Irish Independent in September 2021, has referred to how soon the oncoming waves of pain became so strong that she was left immobilised.

The Oireachtas committee has asked PPNs to lead in terms of engagement with the local authorities in this area. In the last census, 1.1 million people declared they had one disability or more. Seventy percent of such disabilities are of a hidden nature. If we do not give a sense of direction, clarity and focus, it will be very hard. In the courts, there have been clear examples of violations related to public legal arrangements. I have contributed to the legal aid headquarters in my former home town, Cahersiveen. There was none there until fairly recently. It is absolutely shocking at so many levels. We need to be a lot more focused. We have asked for a sense of direction from the Government on how we can advance participative democracy among those of us on the national secretariat and move in conjunction with the representative democracy system.

An Cathaoirleach

Anois, from the Irish delegation to the Committee of the Regions, I call Councillor Michael Murphy. I thank him for being here.

Mr. Michael Murphy

I am delighted to be here. First and foremost, I am here representing the town of Clonmel, a former borough, where local democracy dates from 1649. I really welcome the work of this committee.

I think the most recent White Paper on local government was in 2011. Regrettably, the reforms introduced in 2014 did not realise the excellent vision and ambition in that document. In the context of many of the socioeconomic or societal challenges we face, many of which are discussed in this Chamber daily, there is an urgent need for the meaningful involvement of local authorities, their empowerment and, crucially, their better resourcing.

I am representing the head of the Irish delegation to the European Committee of the Regions. Thankfully, the architect of the Maastricht treaty in 1994 established this body. It is so important that local and regional authorities have a say in the EU legislative and policy-shaping process, particularly when it is borne in mind that 70% of all EU legislation is implemented at the local level. There are 329 members of the Committee of the Regions across the 27 member states. I sit in a chamber with councillors, regional ministers, governors and former prime ministers. It is a great privilege for me to represent the nine Irish full members and the nine Irish alternate members. I assure members of this committee that the Irish delegation punches above its weight. Our work is supported by the secretariat of the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly and the Irish regions office, based in Brussels. We would not punch above our weight were it not for that dedicated support.

In recent months, we have prepared a strategy for the Irish regions office and a local government support service here in Ireland. We are looking for two additional posts in Brussels and the creation of eight EU affairs officer posts here in Ireland, based in clusters. I refer to the previous NUTS 3 level. For example, County Tipperary is clustered with counties Limerick and Clare. The purpose of this is to provide an enhanced support for local authorities and a one-stop shop approach to navigating the EU policy arena and the funding arena. Currently, a number of local authorities here in Ireland have a dedicated EU affairs officer. In some cases they have strategic units - for example, Cork city, Dublin city, County Donegal and Limerick. It will come as no surprise that it is those local authorities that have dedicated EU funding officers and dedicated strategic units. They are the most successful in accessing EU funds. The timing of this strategy, with the EU Presidency in 2026 in mind, is ideal. I seek the support of this committee in the context of this strategy. I am happy to share the strategy with the committee. Again, I congratulate the committee on its work and thank it for this opportunity to present.

An Cathaoirleach

The Association of Irish Regions is represented by Councillor Pádraig McEvoy and Mr. Kevin Lynch, senior planner and assistant director.

Mr. Pádraig McEvoy

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to the members. I am here in a substitute role on behalf of some of the other members of the association.

Three regional assemblies form the Association of Irish Regions. They are the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly, the Northern and Western Regional Assembly and the Southern Regional Assembly. Established under the Local Government Reform Act 2014, the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality govern the exercise of regional assemblies' competences. Each constituent local authority nominates locally elected members, who are closest to the citizens, to oversee and make decisions through the statutory functions of each regional assembly. Local authorities provide the core funding for the assemblies, whose combined employees are limited to around 80.

Regional assemblies are statutorily mandated to co-ordinate strategic policy between local authorities to support coherent spatial planning and environmentally sustainable economic development for societal benefits, ensuring consistency with national programmes, plans, policies, proposals and objectives set by the Government.

In collaboration with local authorities, regional assemblies formulate, adopt, implement and monitor regional spatial and economic strategies and five metropolitan area strategic plans. Centred on Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick-Shannon and Waterford, these MASP policy documents extend to include adjoining local authorities. Each regional spatial and economic strategy assists public bodies, Departments, State agencies and local authorities with the collaborative delivery of democratically approved strategic objectives in the RSES and MASP documents.

The regional assemblies play instrumental roles in delivering EU policy in Ireland. They manage the delivery of regional operational programmes and participate in European territorial co-operation programmes and EU regional projects. They facilitate and assist local authorities in collaborating with EU institutions on regional and local development matters and support the national delegation to the Committee of the Regions, as Mr. Murphy mentioned. The assemblies manage in excess of €1 billion of EU funding in Ireland so they make a significant contribution.

Each assembly contributes a statutory role in the development plan and local economic and community plan process and adopts implementation strategies, assisted by EU project partnerships and funding. These develop capacities across local authorities, the third-level education sector and other public bodies for successful implementation.

While regional assemblies aim to create transformative change within the national policy framework, they are limited by structural challenges. Structural linkages from regional assemblies to the national level are ad hoc, diffuse and weak. Regional assemblies are circumvented in strategic planning matters such as population targets and housing needs assessments. Project Ireland 2040 funding mechanisms and strategic investment decisions remain highly centralised. Ireland's regional governance is characterised by weak autonomy and a lack of devolved funding powers, unlike competing EU regions that benefit from multi-annual funding programmes at subnational levels. This is particularly apparent for metropolitan areas with significant growth targets and challenges but no statutory regional co-ordination mechanisms for delivering funding. Local authorities fund the regional assemblies and nominate elected members who do not have a stated regional or geographic mandate. Tensions between local and regional roles can arise and limit incentives for elected members to provide more leadership to address challenging issues, such as climate change, rapid population expansion and better balanced regional development. A multiplicity of regional public bodies, some with related or overlapping roles and varying administrative geographies, can obscure the mandates of regional assemblies, leaving people uncertain about their functions and so forth. With contributions to strategic planning and EU funding in Ireland since 2015, the recruitment and influence of leading employees in regional assemblies depend on aligning posts with equivalent conditions across local government, the Civil Service and public bodies.

Regional assemblies in Ireland play an important role despite having fewer devolved competences than and a different electoral mandate from their EU counterparts. Reform should enhance regional performance by integrating planning with the resource management that affects the regions. Regional assemblies should be given direct responsibility and greater visibility towards achieving national objectives. We ask that any implementation review the committee might recommend be comprehensive in its examination of the local government process, encompassing both empowerment and responsibility at local and regional levels.

An Cathaoirleach

We now move on to cathaoirleach of Roscommon County Council, Councillor John Keogh.

Mr. John Keogh

I thank the Cathaoirleach for inviting me to address him and the committee on the future of local democracy. There have been multiple reports on this very issue over the decades, many with the recommendation that local communities should have input in the decision-making process on issues that will affect their communities.

Local democracy is the foundation block upon which many of the democratic freedoms we enjoy today have been achieved over many decades. At a time democracies throughout the world are under attack from autocratic or totalitarian regimes, never was it more important to protect democracy by restoring decision-making powers to those elected to local government. I hope that the directly elected mayor of Limerick will be a first step in restoring powers to locally elected representatives, but why has it taken five years to get to this point?

For many years, and particularly since 2014, we have seen the stripping away of councillors’ powers while their workloads have increased through their appointment to multiple strategic policy committees and other committees. The abolition of town councils has only added to this workload. If a councillor is to carry out his or her duties effectively now, the councillor needs to be working in the role full time. Councillors have volumes of paperwork to digest, with little to no administrative support.

Given the increasing workload of the councillor, the pay and conditions do not encourage participation, knowing the work that will be involved and the fact that the councillor will not have a decision-making capacity in many respects. While there is a perception that councillors and external members have decision-making capacity when formulating policies on SPCs, the reality is that there is little to no deliberation on policy at SPC meetings and many such meetings only provide updates on work undertaken by council staff rather than see discussions on policy development. I raised this issue in respect of the SPC that I was the chairperson of for two years. Ireland is now an outlier when it comes to local democracy. We have far fewer local representatives per head of population compared with our European counterparts.

Local councillors are becoming increasingly frustrated by bureaucratic processes, regulation and the failure of central government to listen to those who know their areas best. Some State agencies demonstrate what I consider to be contempt for locally elected representatives by often refusing to meet them in a timely manner at the locations they desire. The uncivilised protest outside the Oireachtas last year is a byproduct of the diminution of the powers of those elected to local government. The role of the local councillor has become so mired in regulation and bureaucracy that the sword of Damocles hangs over councillors day in, day out, be it in respect of planning or data protection, so much so that an environment of fear has been created among elected members. When it comes to formulating county development plans, councillors are constantly warned of the requirement to strictly adhere to the national planning framework, national policy targets and regional planning guidelines or risk having those few remaining powers of local councillors stripped by the Minister of the day. Local authorities are no longer local governments. Rather, they have become administrative areas of central government.

Sadly, because of the demands of the office, threats and intimidation, the role of the councillor is no longer one that encourages people to seek election. Due to this, we regularly see capable women and men stepping down from elected office mid-term. In County Roscommon, we are seeing capable politicians not seeking re-election.

It is time to devolve power back to local government so as to allow communities greater input into the decisions that will affect them. Ronald Reagan’s speech, “A Time for Choosing”, is a lesson from which all those who seek to protect democracy could learn. When the rights of the community or county to make its own decisions and determine its own destiny are stripped away, the foundation block of democracy is removed. Remove the foundation block and all else falls.

I thank members to the opportunity to address them. I am happy to answer any questions they may have.

Mr. Tony Fitzgerald

Tá áthas orm a bheith anseo. I wish to place the role of elected members in the healthy cities and counties movement at the heart of local authorities. I am delighted to take this opportunity to contribute at this meeting.

Local authorities provide the political leadership for advancing priorities in a vast array of services to people in their everyday lives, from city and development planning and urban design, renewal and regeneration to sustainable economic development and the maintenance and provision of public parks. I have witnessed how efficient public services lead to positive societal health and well-being.

The World Health Organization states that healthy and thriving cities demand social, economic, human and planetary wellbeing. To achieve this, we need to place health at the heart of city planning. Cork has been a designated WHO healthy city since 2012. The WHO healthy cities European network is a movement that captures and motivates local democracy within cities in the WHO European region as a tangible pathway to supporting health for all at local level. The movement’s emphasis is on political endeavour, led by European health policy, supported by national health policy and delivered at local level.

The WHO healthy cities network has brought together more than 100 flagship cities and approximately 30 national networks, which is a testament to the positive experience that cities have had in successfully embedding intersectoral action on health. Cork and Belfast are the only two cities on the island of Ireland with designated WHO healthy city status. Ireland has a national network of healthy cities, with all local authorities currently employing healthy city and county co-ordinators. Healthy city and county collaboration has driven change in local political, social, economic and urban design policy agendas. The main principles of the healthy cities movement include community participation, working in partnership, empowerment and equality. The framework of the healthy cities approach is based on three key factors: the importance of local action in all aspects of developing health in local authorities; the importance of urban settings for health and wellbeing; and the key role of local governments in creating conditions and supportive environments for healthy living for all.

What does this mean in reality? A Chathaoirligh, I am sure a Kerryman would not deny a Corkman the opportunity to tell him the tangible steps we are taking in Cork. We have placed health at the heart of city planning. We are proud of our designation as a WHO healthy city and we have committed to it in our city development plan, which sets out how Cork city will grow and develop over the next six years, continuing to be an innovative, vibrant and healthy city.

As the political representative for Cork’s healthy cities movement, I proactively engage with my fellow councillors to ensure that the healthy cities action plan is circulated and central to every strategic policy group, not least the corporate policy group, endorsed and discussed at council, and approved by all of our 31 members. Health and well-being are central to decision- and policy-making at local authority level. Ensuring high-quality homes, liveable streets and neighbourhoods, clean air, sustainable economic development, active transport and safe community spaces means we will have a healthy, thriving population.

This public consultation forum could be a platform for each local authority to select elected members for the local healthy cities and counties movement following this year’s local elections, which could create a forum for health and wellbeing as a political priority over the next few years.

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his role in this matter. I thank members for listening to me.

Mr. Peter Flynn

Imagine a local government system that encouraged young people, people from the private sector and people from multiple backgrounds and qualifications and where people knew their politicians. Imagine a system where officials were actually held to account and people knew who they were locally. Imagine a system that was largely self-funding and did not rely on handouts from Departments to maintain councils. Imagine a council that delivered large council estates and a significant number of affordable homes for working people. Imagine a council that dealt with the local chambers of commerce, IDA, Ireland Fáilte Ireland, other agencies, Tidy Towns committees, twinning committees and various community groups. Imagine a system in which councillors were held to account for every single decision they were required to make.

When I was elected to Westport Town Council in 1999, I was in a full-time role as an accountant at a multinational called Allergan. I had no political background. I simply wanted to be a part of the local community. I managed to get 180 votes and was lucky enough to be elected to the town council. In six weeks when I put my name forward, I will require 1,800 votes to get over the line. When I joined Westport Town Council, there were nine councillors serving 5,000 people.

Today, one councillor serves 5,000 people. In 1999 in Westport Town Council, two of the nine members were female. Today, in Mayo County Council, two out of 30 members are female. At the time, the average of members of Westport Town Council was 40 and today it is 60. I state 60 as a "nice" number, because the actual age is significantly higher. At the time, most of the members of the town council were in the private sector, with various backgrounds and qualifications. Today, in Mayo County Council, 20% of members are auctioneers, 20% are farmers, 30% are retirees and just 10% are in the private sector doing what I would call 9 to 5 jobs. At present, as a councillor, I make decisions on important stuff like development plans, section 183s and zoning decisions. I make decision on parts of Mayo that I have no clue about because I do not know the areas. I will never knock on a door there and I will never be held to account for those decisions.

In the days of the town council we had three key people: the town manager, the town clerk and the town engineer. They came to all our key meetings, which were held in the evenings in order for us to manage our day jobs. The three were held to account for every single decision they made and most importantly, they were known to the people of Westport. Since 2001, local government has been destroyed. It was murdered in 2014. At that time, county managers were being described as such. Then the name was changed to "chief executive officers". In my view, they should be called supreme leaders. They have absolute power, with absolutely no accountability. We have created organisations which have lost sight of the role of councils, where now chief executives think they are part of the IDA, or leaders of Fáilte Ireland or Enterprise Ireland. They have lost sight of what they are actually supposed to be doing in terms of delivering the basics for people at local level. We have created organisations where nobody is responsible and nobody is accountable. We have created the worst local government system in Europe. That is not my description but it comes from a report published last year which places Ireland down alongside Moldova and Hungary. We have created the Standards In Public Office Commission, SIPO, and the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR. Tell me a time that SIPO actually found someone guilty of mismanagement of council funds. I certainly cannot tell the committee about any such instance. We now have the OPR and the Department with more power than any single council or any single Minister, where they determine every local government plan.

The single biggest issue in the country at the moment is housing. Going back to Westport Town Council, in the first council I was part of, we delivered 54 affordable homes. Since the town councils were abolished, Mayo County Council has delivered zero affordable homes. With Westport Town Council, in a bad year we would have had compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, of five derelict properties. Since 2014 in Mayo County Council, five derelict properties have been subject to a CPO.

In terms of affordable sites, nothing has happened in the years since Mayo County Council took over. My parents were lucky enough to get an affordable site in 1970 when there was no money. Last year, Westport and the surrounding area was designated as a rental pressure zone, RPZ but nothing more has happened. Rental by Airbnb continues to expand beyond the town boundaries. Local government is dying in front of us. It is broken. Commercial rates are certainly not helping the system and the Town Centre First policy is nothing more than a catchphrase.

In my view, the buck stops in this room. The Senators are the legislators who determined the various local government Acts that have gone through this House since 2001. We cannot blame the British system, because we have transformed it. We cannot blame Europe and we cannot blame the people, because it was not done by way of referendums. It was done by the legislators in this room over the last 20 years. I am asking that the radical choices be made. It is not tinkering at the edges that is required but rather something radical to really change local democracy in Ireland. The Senators have the opportunity to make a real mark. People question the role of the Seanad. If the Senators can transform local government, it will leave a legacy that will be talked about for generations to come.

Mr. Seán O'Grady

Go raibh míle maith agaibh a Chathaoirligh, a Sheanadóirí, a chomhairleoirí agus a dhaoine uaisle. In less than two months we will commemorate the tenth anniversary of the abolition of Ireland's town councils. In Phil Hogan's Putting People First document, more was promised than what was delivered in the intervening decade. The municipal entities that now exist were going to be given extra powers and responsibilities. However, ten years down the line nothing has transpired to improve the powers and responsibility of local authorities and it appears that the downward trajectory is set to continue.

In the last few decades, central government has transferred a very large number of public services to non-governmental agencies, in sectors of local government and health that were the responsibility of local government in the past. This major move away from democratic assemblies has had the effect of reducing the responsibility from national politicians and civil servants on these matters. I suspect that the strategy is to farm out the problem in order to have easier lives, as it were. This, together with a corporate mindset and the failure by central government, over decades, to introduce a financial model for local government, has rendered local government seriously wounded as a sister entity to the national government for the progression of our people.

In the Sunday Independent recently, Conor Skehan informed us that there are more than 30,000 charities in Ireland. The article went on to comment on how the non-profit sector has transferred a very large number of public services to these bodies. Many of us were hopeful that a comprehensive local government model to project us into the future would be in situ by now. Alas, central government was promoting a different concept. Mr. Skehan goes on to tell us that it is globally recognised that the lack of democratic oversight or accountability is the key weakness of this sector. Powerful and well-funded NGOs can distort public services away from the priorities, democratically established for the common good and towards the issues on which they are active.

In an interview last year, a former Minister vented some of his frustrations about how politics is now conducted. This former Minister is not running in the next general election and so has become more outspoken than he used to be. In a very telling comment, which the journalist, David Quinn, posted on X, he remarked, "I have said to colleagues that I would have more influence on Government policy if I was a middle-ranking official with an NGO than I have as a Government backbencher, and I regret that". In an article in the Irish Independent on Sunday, 7 April last, Mr. Quinn noted that the main parties are in thrall to lobby groups instead of their own grassroots members and voters. The great irony of the statement by the former Minister, who was a good Minister, was that he was part of the higher echelons of government that agreed to treat the democratic local government and the people together with the relevant Civil Service sectors and the lobbyists for the NGOs, with disdain, wittingly or unwittingly.

This leaves those of us who wish for meaningful local democratic government struggling for air. The enormous scale of the task the Senators have set themselves is seismic. It is mind-boggling that an arm of government has been continually trampled on by successive national governments over the past decades. Small minds and a national political psyche that sees local democratic government as an opponent to be continually kept down, lest it become a threat to those in the higher echelons, should long ago have been confined to the dustbin.

Without a thriving, democratic local government system, national government will continue to strive to retain affinity with the people and will eventually fall and fail. The local government system we have could only be described as minimalist, at the very best. We need a meaningful, effective and efficient system of local government that complements and assists national government to restore the confidence of the public in the political system once again.

I am not advocating that the town councils should be re-established but rather the towns should be used as the centre of a local government unit. Neither am I suggesting that NGOs should be significantly reduced but it must be recognised that democratic local government has suffered severely because of what has been ceded to these organisations. This must be reclaimed in the interests of democracy in the local government system. This can take many shapes and forms. My own preference is for a district unit that has a natural geographical, social, historical, economic and cultural affinity with the people. This is a model that would have the greatest potential to unify and straddle the urban-rural divide and bring decent representation and tangible local policies to the people that would seep into every home, townland and parish in the unit. Such a unit would give people an important input into the needs of their area and bring the administrative centre within easy reach. Any truly democratic, statutory assembly that is not, by and large, financially autonomous would not be worthwhile as there would not exist the basis for putting any proposal or project into effect and it would in time, lose the confidence of the people.

Without its own finances, budget and without a rating function and finance-generating functions, it would render such an assembly neutered, just like the present subcounty structure when compared with what existed before. This is not to mention the new functions that could be ceded to local authorities into the future. The proper democratic unit, as described, would have immense influence and new functions, such as substance abuse, care of the aged, crèche facilities and so on. I would maintain that the present county structure is too large. The county structure is too separate and remote from the people. In most countries this has been abolished as a unit of local government that is no longer fit for purpose. The Six Counties in Northern Ireland have lost the luxury of county units with some areas in the realm of local government, yet it has not depleted their affiliation or loyalty to their counties. As it happens they are currently the strongest province in Ireland in Gaelic football terms.

In any case, daunting as is the task the committee has taken on and unlikely as it may appear that it will meet with any success, it is a good and worthy venture. The Seanad must be congratulated on the noble journey it has decided to undertake.

As an aside, I took great delight when the people decided a few years back to retain Seanad Éireann against the Government of the day who offered this august assembly, with all its faults, as a sacrificial lamb. The people spurned the offer. Go raibh míle maith agat, a Chathaoirligh.

An Cathaoirleach

Go raibh míle maith agat, Mr. O'Grady.

Mr. Walter Lacey

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus leis na Seanadóirí as an deis a thabhairt dom labhairt leis an Seanad inniu mar chuid de chomhairliúchán poiblí an tSeanaid ar thodhchaí an daonlathais áitiúil.

I fully support the comments of councillors John Keogh and Tony Fitzgerald. It is likely I may repeat some of them.

When I mention Carlow I do so in the context of all towns of a similar size and form of town councils. I served on Carlow town and county councils for 25 years up to 2014 when the town councils were abolished. I continued for another five years on Carlow County Council. I then retired from local politics in 2019. In 2014, I strongly opposed the abolition of town councils as I felt then, and to this day I still feel, that it was a poor decision by then Minister. Carlow UDC, or town council, served the people of Carlow from 1899 to 2014. That was 150 years of real local democracy.

When town councils were abolished, the area that was represented by Carlow Town Council was replaced by a municipal area that actually extended beyond the original town boundary, taking in nearby rural areas around the town. The new municipal area was allocated seven seats and this meant the new district, including Carlow town, which once had nine members, now had only seven representatives or 39% out of the 18 representatives for the entire county. Up to 2014, Carlow Town Council had its own sizeable budget consisting of rates and other charges coupled with Government grants. The nine members of Carlow Town Council were able to make decisions for their own area and within their own budget. Carlow lost its own identity as it was now the smaller percentage of the county as a whole but with over 50% of the population of the entire county.

I am very conscious of the duplication of representation on both Carlow town and county councils prior to 2014. There was a need for a reconfiguration process. In Carlow there were also six members of Carlow Town Council elected to Carlow County Council. I believe, however, that abolishing the town council was the easy option for the Minister to take. A further option could have been taken by going full time, as members said earlier, which was one possibility. My ask of this Seanad consultation process on the future of local democracy is to seriously consider the reinstatement of town councils, including the abolition of dual membership of councils as it was at the time. This was an unnecessary duplication.

I want to mention the quota systems. These form part of the overall electoral system. I have mixed feelings on introducing quota systems. I understand there is an effort to attract more female representation into politics. I believe there should be more women in politics. In Carlow at the moment, there are two female representatives out of 18. I have noticed there is an increase in female candidates for the upcoming elections in June. There are two trains of thought about a quota system. I find myself quoting two very strange bedfellows: Deputy Michael Healy-Rae and former Speaker of the House in Washington, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Deputy Healy-Rae does not believe in having a quota system and feels it is insulting to women. When asked about a quota system, Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said, "I don't want anybody to vote for me because I'm a woman. I don't want anybody to vote against me because I'm a woman.” For years now the political system by its nature has done nothing to encourage women into politics. If the Government does feel it necessary to introduce quotas in local democracy, then I call on the Government to enforce it within their own political parties. One of the current Government parties has three candidates in an upcoming local election in Carlow. All three candidates are men. It needs to be enforced.

I have one final comment. Reference has been made to the private sector and I raised this as an issue with previous Ministers. Provision is made for public and civil servants if they wish to contest local or national elections, and certainly for national elections. People in the farming community and business owners are in a position to make their own provisions if they wish to go into politics. Retired people, and indeed unemployed people, who are all entitled to seek election, have time on their side if they wish to enter politics. It is different, however, for people like me. I was an employee in the private sector and found it next to impossible to enter elected politics but for the generosity of the company I had worked with for 40 years. I want the committee to be conscious that the full-time role for councillors is probably the only option. Otherwise people in the private sector just cannot do it. For an elected TD, the person must leave his or her job, and if the Dáil falls in one or two years, then the person is out of a job and out of a seat as he or she may not get re-elected. A teacher, for example, would be able to go back to teaching.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach as an deis labhairt leis an gcoiste anseo inniu. Guímid gach rath ar na baill ina gcuid oibre.

An Cathaoirleach

We have two final speakers before members come in. I invite Mr. Horgan.

Mr. Peter Horgan

For the past ten years I have worked as a parliamentary adviser to Deputy Sean Sherlock. That work spanned across three Departments: Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Foreign Affairs and Education. The work also spanned across the Oireachtas. I have had direct level engagement with the city and county councils in Cork. I am a peace commissioner. I contested the 2019 local elections in Cork city and will contest them again this year for the Labour Party.

Over those years I have submitted more than 45 freedom of information requests to Cork City Council on topics I believe should be readily accessible to the public. I am here today at this committee to advocate for open data at a local level. By having to submit freedom of information requests on issues ranging from dog fouling to footpath repairs to claims made to the council to spending on the event centre, it diminishes the standing of the council locally. This is not just a Cork issue. A colleague of mine in Laois, Eoin Barry, has had a similar issue with bus shelters. Shane Folan in Donaghmede had an issue with road repairs. My colleague Councillor Elaine McGinty in Meath brought a case forward to preserve tape recordings in county development planning meetings for longer than two months. She won that decision from the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner in 2022 said that 12% of all freedom of information requests to public bodies came from local authorities.

Whether it is real or perceived, there is an element of gatekeeping of information at local authority level. That information gets dispersed either through elected members asking specific types of questions at committee or plenary level or, in my experience, through freedom of information attempts. It should be possible to see how many fines have been issued for littering, the number of traffic accidents on a particular road and everything else that informs how a city and an area can be run in an accessible way. In the United States of America, in the city of South Bend, Indiana, the former mayor and now US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, introduced an online data portal that allows everyone to click onto it to see the running of the city and suburbs, with spending, fines, tickets and statistics readily available for whoever wants the information. It can all be seen on that portal, and I really would encourage members to look up portal, down to the granularity of which are the street corners where accidents happen and then where the physical infrastructure can be put. If there was a similar portal used in Ireland, it would be a massive step forward.

In the previous session of this committee, my former party leader, Deputy Brendan Howlin, said that people demand accountability from their local authorities.

I would go one step further, and echo Deputy Howlin, by insisting that accountability cannot be achieved without transparency at a local level. Without full and proactive transparency, there is no way for local councils to be held accountable by the people outside of election season. Many Senators are former members of city and county councils and, therefore, they are at the forefront when they knock on doors but officials are not so we need the date to be released.

Data is not sexy. It is not glorious or headline grabbing but it is what is needed to rebalance confidence across local authorities and within the body politic. It is only by having data freely published, easily accessible and robustly defended that we can tackle the fake news mindset pervading society that is damages local and national politics. That is not an easy thing. It will require a change of mindset at political and executive levels. Plus, there is an element of investment needed to process and input data. We are not seeking to create new data but for the data already held by local authorities to be released in a way that the public can interact with. It is not a silver bullet to safeguard the future of local government but a stepping stone in that work.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Horgan. That goes to the point he made about the data portal for information. If data is not being measured, it is not being done. If one cannot see if fines are being imposed or not collected, and similarly with accidents. The problem persists and undermines people's belief in the system and whether it is working.

Finally, I welcome the parents of Harry Deane to the Gallery. They are most welcome. Anois, I call Mr. Deane, who is our final contributor before Senators comment.

Mr. Harry Deane

I thank the Cathaoirleach, the Leader, the Deputy Leader, the rapporteur and the rest of the Senators for the opportunity to speak here today.

I am a politics and society teacher with a background in political science from UCD and a passion for local government reform, stemming from my father who is currently serving as a representative on Meath County Council.

From my extensive research, our local government is losing power and relevance. This problem of having a weak local government has found its way into the lives of TDs. As a result, a stronger local government could help reduce the excessive focus on local matters by TDs. A 2010 survey, conducted by the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, found that TDs, on average, spent 53% of their working week on constituency-based work and 38% on parliamentary duties. The survey was conducted four years before Ireland abolished 80 town councils, bringing the number of local representatives from 1,627 to 949. This shift to centralise most of the local government's original responsibilities is another reason TDs are forced to deal with local issues. If we returned some of the power and responsibilities to local government, we would not only give people a more democratic society but also make them feel like their voice is being heard in a system that is heavily centralised. It is time for Deputies to focus on policy, not just potholes.

I understand first-hand that both local representatives and citizens can feel frustrated by the limited power of local government. The role of local government is to be a voice of the community and the most accessible form of government but it is challenging to address issues when power is concentrated at a higher level. Therefore, let us give power back to the people, where it belongs, in their local communities.

In Ireland, there is a problem with representation as, according to Article 16.2.2° of the Constitution, it is our constitutional right to have one TD represent every 20,000 to 30,000 citizens, which is currently not being met. It is puzzling that instead of increasing local representation town councils were abolished in 2014, eliminating a crucial layer of governance.

When comparing Ireland's local government with a similar system in Denmark to understand why Ireland's local government is considered weak, similar themes and trends emerge. Despite Ireland undergoing reform in 2012, the effectiveness of this reform is questionable when compared with that of Denmark. Denmark's 2007 reform decentralised local government and granted local government decision-making power in key sectors such as education, pensions and healthcare. The decline in interest can also be observed through voting turnout and public opinion, with other EU countries like France achieving success through decentralisation. Since the 1970s, Ireland has seen a significant decrease in voter turnout for local government elections while Denmark's turnout has remained high post reform.

Ireland has been moved towards centralisation with a reduction in local government powers and a transfer of authority to central government. Denmark and France have done it. Let us learn successful models and make local government work for Ireland.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Deane. One of the things that struck me while people talked about the evolving changes and powers that have been introduced by Departments in the creation of agencies with political representation is what was put in previous programmes for Government in respect of regulatory impact assessments. It might be an idea for the next programme for Government to include a democratic impact assessment whereby if we bring in a particular reform, what the impact will be on public oversight in terms of a lot of the bodies that are being created or the changes that are happening. Let us remember that local authority representatives put their names on the ballot paper every five years, and members of the Dáil and the Seanad do the same at least every five years if not more. As many have pointed out, if there is no public representation in respect of oversight, who is there to be the eyes and ears of the public? Hence, people believe that they are not being represented or listened to because at least by having public representatives people can talk to them whereas often times, when trying to engage with agencies, one does not know whom to contact and if one does then that person may not reply. I call Senator Victor Boyhan.

Senator Victor Boyhan

I thank all the witnesses for their informative submissions. We had advance notice about many of the things they were going to say from their submissions.

I will address the representatives of Fórsa first. I am particularly pleased that its representatives are here. Fórsa is a very active trade union. I am very supportive of the work done by Fórsa. There were industrial relations issues with the organisation that impacted on politicians in terms of their engagement. That matter is not for today and I am only referencing it. .

I thank the Fórsa representatives for their communication. Of course we have the Fórsa magazine here and the magazines billow up in the boxes they come in. It is great to read the magazine. I believe that we have the potential to be greater stakeholders. Fórsa needs to examine how it interacts with the elected members of local authorities and, indeed, the elected members of the Oireachtas. We may be missing something so there should be an opportunity for further dialogue with Fórsa. I believe that we sing off the same page on most issues. There are literally 1,000 stakeholders who are elected representatives. These people are critically aware of the work, challenges and tasks of the union's membership. We are consciously aware of certain attempts to privatise some services and the challenges relating to the same applies to Irish Water and the disaster that has been up to now.

I appeal to Fórsa that we engage more and work more because I believe the trade union has many champions within local authorities. I mean not only in the workforce because clearly Fórsa has that. I refer to elected members. There is a lot to be achieved by greater synergy and co-operation. We are not agin each other but there is great potential to work with each other.

On PPNs, there have been challenges about PPNs. Councillors have asked me what are the PPNs doing because they are not elected. I believe in the grassroots element of democracy. I believe that great people have come from PPNs. Even though the PPNs are a very active and successful organisation we need to address concerns. We also need clear parameters about the role of PPNs. There is no opposition but there needs to be greater parameters. The PPN Secretariat and Fórsa slightly differ from other groups on many issues but I believe progress can be made. The committee has all of the submissions and we will take them on board.

Mr. Horgan made a strong and valid case for open data. My colleagues and I will argue for us to specifically consider open data as one of our tasks and major asks because it shines a light on a load of issues. It is about access to information, validation, accountability and transparency.

Finally, I thank everyone who made submissions here today. Well done.

Senator Mark Wall

I thank everybody who has made a contribution. The meeting has been excellent as always.

I am delighted that representatives of Fórsa are here today because the trade union has an important part to play in the future of local government. It represents 12,000 people who are at the coalface of local government day in, day out.

I deal with them daily and I am sure my colleagues deal with them as well. The witnesses know the stress and strain they are under in functioning for local government day in and day out. It is important to say that, and we recognised that by inviting the witnesses here. A concern I have about what was mentioned in Mr. Carrothers's contribution was the report that is going to tell us 40% are seeking a new job. Maybe he could tell us what is behind that. I probably know what is behind it. It is important the people he represents, who are the cornerstone of local government, are recognised in every report we do. It goes without saying that housing and waste disposal has to be brought back. That is something I support and will continue to campaign for.

On the PPNs, I had "What can citizens bring to the table?" written down. That is what the PPN is all about. I recognise Mr. O'Shea because we have spoken before and I am conscious of what he has brought to the table. That is why it is important the PPNs are part of the whole local government discussion. It is also important, when we are talking about policy, that people get to play a role in that.

On regional assemblies, I have two questions for Mr. Murphy and Mr. McEvoy. We are all talking about the planning Bill that is coming through here fairly quickly. We are all looking forward to it, even the Cathaoirleach. What has the planning Bill in store for regional assemblies and where is it going? The other aspect I am concerned about is centralisation and the one-size-fits notion in relation to regional assemblies, that everything is going to be the same everywhere. That is not the case with regional assemblies. I would like a few comments on that.

Then there is the future of town councils. I was a proud town councillor on Athy Town Council. It was one of the worst decisions made by any Government. I have said that and will continue to say it because it removes local democracy from those who need it and brings it so far away. The whole municipal district system has failed and I will say that and continue to say it.

Councillor Horgan know my issues with data. He has raised this with me before. If we do not have the data then we cannot fix the problems. It is as simple as that.

Well done to Mr. Deane on a great contribution. As we have said, one of the issues for this committee is looking at young people coming into politics and he has made that contribution today and made it very well. I thank all our ex-colleagues who have been here today and indeed the colleagues over there. Town councils are important and whatever form they come back in, we have to bring local democracy back to local people.

Senator Frances Black

I thank everyone most sincerely for coming in to share their ideas and perspectives with us. I thank Fórsa, the PPN, the Irish delegation to the European Committee of the Regions and, of course, the councillors. We have heard from organisations, former Ministers with responsibility for local government and councillors, who have brought varied and valuable insights that have been fascinating. I am learning so much and it has been fascinating to engage with, but I am very glad to also be hearing from members of the public. I wanted to acknowledge that. We are here to serve the interests of those here and this is a modest expression of direct democracy. This whole process reflects the deliberative and exploratory role of the committee and the Seanad more broadly and I thank the Cathaoirleach for that, as well as Senator Cassells for being the rapporteur. We have the space here to create a more open environment to discuss these issues than is available in the often fiery and contentious atmosphere that can happen in the Dáil. I am going to throw out some questions, but unfortunately I will have to leave due to an emergency commitment. I will not be able to hear the answers, so apologies for that.

When I was first elected to the House in 2016, I was rather surprised at how often local issues are brought up. That reflects the lack of powers vested in local government. Then there is the separate issue of the Seanad being seen as a staging post for election to the Dáil. Do our guests think the prevalence of local issues at national level undermines faith in local democracy? That is the first question.

When the former Ministers with responsibility for housing spoke to the committee, there was broad agreement the abolition of town councils was a mistake and other Senators have brought this up. I would like to hear from our guests about whether they think those councils should be restored.

As a final point, I wanted to highlight that having secretarial support and the assistance of researchers and independent legal advice from the OPLA are essential for Members of the Oireachtas to do their job diligently and get through all the day's tasks efficiently, so I honestly do not know how councillors cope without that support and help. What kind of supports do our guests think would be most helpful?

Senator Joe O'Reilly

Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe go léir. Bhí a gcuid ráitis ar fheabhas agus iontach suimiúil, so I thank them for that. I have just four quick questions and comments. Every contribution would give rise to a discussion in itself and all were brilliant, but I will just touch on four things. I am fascinated by the Fórsa contribution in the sense that, when I was a young fellow, getting a job in a county council was extremely sought after, extremely prestigious and it was the wish of every parent to have their child working in the council. As such, the change there is fascinating and the representatives might comment more on it. Do they think the change is around the fact there is a lack of power there or there is a feeling there is a lack of influence? For potential candidates I know it is around salaries, so there are a number of things. To what degree is the power an issue in it? I am picking it up anecdotally that many councils are having trouble with recruitment at the moment when it comes to the number or applicants. That is my first question.

I thank Councillor Murphy for his contribution and the work he does in the EU. As he correctly identifies, 70% of the legislation that impacts on our lives comes through the EU. Does he feel he is influencing that and, if so, through what mechanisms and can we assist him?

I find Councillor McEvoy's situation fascinating because, to be truthful, if a regional authority gets powers, does that not by definition erode the powers of the county councils? It is a very difficult one to manipulate and I would be fascinated by his response to it.

I agree absolutely with Councillor Horgan on the data. Councillors cannot operate without it. I am prepared to say publicly we need to restore the town councils. We certainly need to restore them in the larger towns. I am not as aware as my colleague Senator Wall, who I have great respect for, that the municipal districts are failing but the absence of town councils is a huge problem for democracy and may be contributing to all the extremes that are developing. I would be interested in any further remarks the witnesses might have to make about that.

Time is an issue and every contribution this evening could give rise to a discussion in itself. I mean that genuinely and am not being patronising. They were outstanding.

Senator Shane Cassells

I welcome my Meath colleague Councillor Francis Deane to the Public Gallery. I served with him on both Navan town and county councils. I welcome also his wife, Fiona, and sister-in-law, Martina. It is great to see former councillor Sean O'Grady with us. I was part of a European initiative against drugs 22 years ago and there I first met Sean. I was mayor of Navan and slightly younger than I am now. Sean and his wife, Kitty, who joins him today, were there representing Kerry. We also both met the Queen of Sweden on that occasion, if I recall. Sean got closer in the seating pecking order than I did.

This afternoon session has been really informative and we have touched on a wide range of issues. It is interesting and right that Fórsa has been here to make the case for those who work within the sector as employees, the service they provide to the public and the duty of care they have. I always welcome the engagement of Fórsa with the public representatives. In the previous term I was local government spokesperson for Fianna Fáil and Fórsa held a pre-local election debate about the party's position on numerous points. The analysis the union representatives are talking about is something I, the Cathaoirleach and the Oireachtas research team are doing a body of work on to look at the legislative changes to local government over the past 30-odd years and the powers that have been ceded as a result.

That is going to form part of this report in terms of presenting that to the people collectively. It does not necessarily mean we would support the reinstatement of every aspect of that. Indeed, I said at that debate that I would not support the reinstatement of waste services to the local authorities, but the point is to try to present it as a whole and have a proper debate about it, and that will be important.

PPNs’ involvement as part of civil society is so important, and we have to make sure they are not seen as an adversary but are respected within the conversations and the processes that need to happen.

Councillor Murphy is very welcome. I was a youth delegate to the Committee of the Regions on the Treaty of Rome many years ago, and I have seen the importance of its work.

The point Councillor McEvoy made was very interesting. In previous sessions, we have discussed where we would have the importance of regional assemblies as part of this process, and that is going to be really important in the context of whether, as a society, we take them seriously, and there is also the set of devolved statutory powers. We see in the context of European elections that there are huge swathes of constituencies where there is buy-in from the public for these massive constituencies, but given our country's small nature, they are important. I really welcome Councillor McEvoy’s contribution and it will form part of our discussions.

Conversely, we have had an extensive discussion on the impact of the abolition of town councils. I was a town councillor for three terms, concurrent with being a county councillor. As so many speakers have said, including Mr. Lacey, Councillor Murphy, Mr. O’Grady and Councillor Flynn in the context of Westport, we had statutory powers. In the town of Navan, where Councillor Deane and I served, we had a budget of €12 million or €13 million just for the town, with our own planners, engineers and housing department. There was a special focus on the town. As Councillor Flynn said in his opening remarks, everyone knew our town clerk when he walked up the street. There was engagement between the public and the officials, which has, sadly, gone since the abolition of the town councils. People knew who the officials were on a local authority, which is very important given the nature of our system, and that has been a retrograde step. I am not sure whether we will ever get them back but there has to be a scenario where, at the very least, the MD system will have to have more statutory powers.

The contribution made by Councillor Deane, whom I know personally and whom I praise for his contribution and his analysis, demonstrated that, for both Denmark and France, there is a knock-on impact in terms of declining engagement by the public with the process, and that is reflected in lower turnouts. That is a very dangerous slope on which we find ourselves.

I thank our local authority members and my colleagues councillors Keogh, Fitzgerald and Flynn for the work they do and for having outlined the frustrations they have as part of that work. The job of national government should be to make local government work more efficiently for those on the ground and the people we serve. I thank everyone for their contributions.

Mr. Richy Carrothers

I appreciate the comments of members, and Fórsa appreciates the fact our presence is appreciated. I am a local government person and housing officer by trade. I come to the local government sector as someone who is very interested in the connection with the local community. Our divisional cathaoirleach is also the cathaoirleach of our branch in Fingal County Council. We are here because we want local government to work. There were some references to industrial issues over the past 12 months and there will be other time for that, but it is important to note that 40% of people are looking for new work within the local government sector. Senator O'Reilly was bang on in his comments. The local government jobs were the most coveted jobs in the public sector. It was all the aspirations he spoke about that people had. In fact, people left over parts of the public sector to come into the local government sector, but it is no longer the job of choice. Let us be clear about that.

I might give a couple of other statistics that illustrate this. Four out of five respondents to our survey believe they are carrying out work at a higher level without it being reciprocated. Job evaluation is in nearly every other part of the public sector but not in the local government sector. One finding that surprised me was that 80% of respondents to this comprehensive survey said they had suffered abuse or harassment at the hands of service users or the public. It is no longer the fatted calf or the job people want, as it may have been in the past. I reiterate that local government workers have a tripartite interest in this debate and this success. They are workers in their own right, they are taxpayers but they are also service users. They are the people who live in their local communities. They are in our GAA clubs, our soccer clubs and our running clubs. It is not something they are external to, and the success of the sector is success for them in their own right. Senator Black referred to the continuum of democratic deficits and the lack of connection from decision-makers. Decision-makers have been disempowered and the centralisation of decisions in the Houses of the Oireachtas and quangos is disempowering local communities. It is interesting that people have said broadly the same things. Ours is the weakest form of local government in Europe and the least representative form of local government in Europe, and all the bodies here and people in the political system are pointing in that direction. That is a strong trajectory to get the system right and to improve the lived experiences for local people.

As Senator Boyhan said, we need greater interaction. Certainly, from a Fórsa perspective, we want to influence policymakers and to impress on decision-makers how to strengthen local government. Next week, the local government trade unions are going to launch their More Power to You campaign, which is about the reinvigoration of the local government sector in advance of the elections. I would appreciate a conversation over a cup of coffee with Senator Cassells about the remunicipalisation of waste because the model throughout Europe is about bringing services in house and taking them back from the private sector. As they say in Dublin, bring back the bins.

Mr. Stephen Rourke

I might read out something that encapsulates a lot of what has been said and of what we in the PPN think. It comes from a document from the co-ordinator of the Cavan PPN, Daniel Downey. He states that since the Prodi Commission of 2001, there has been a recognition of a crisis of legitimacy in Europe due to a democratic deficit in how citizens are involved in their societies. Under the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, he continues, steps were taken to bring citizens closer to decision-making through a variety of strategies and implementations, with the Irish manifestation coming in the Local Government Reform Act 2014 and the establishment of the PPNs for community groups to empower their voice. He goes on to state it has been recognised, however, that consultation without empowered participation has led to a further erosion of citizens' willingness to engage in these processes.

Sherry Arnstein writes that participation without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating process for the powerless. It allows the powerholder to claim all sides were considered and consulted but makes it impossible for only some of those sides to benefit. It maintains the status quo. Under the Local Government Reform Act 2014, PPNs were established to empower citizens beyond merely hearing to provide a status for citizens to partake in developing policies. It is our hope PPNs can form a 21st century form of democracy to work alongside the representative and executive elements of councils to engender a higher form of participation in democratic vibrancy.

Without climbing Arnstein's ladder, in practice, this may never come to be, and the identified crisis of legitimacy may continue as long as citizen and voter apathy continues to grow in our society, especially among our younger, newer generations.

Mr. Donal O'Shea

Much of what I have heard goes back to misalignment. That is misalignment of policy and leadership culture. I will give some examples. The well-being statements are going out over four years nationally. What are we doing? The guardianship pack has been going on since autumn of 2021. I have contributed to both. Why are we looking at them and waiting for them? I will give some examples from the other side, in a personal capacity. I have contributed to the reform of the criminal justice strategy. Six weeks later, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, announced radical reforms to family law. More locally, the county development plan has the need for new area policy to facilitate the activation of social inclusion. To give a bigger example, a year after a submission on government formation to reinforce the civil rights and disability sector, I made representations to the European Commission and the European Parliament and was successful. Their words will impact on millions of lives in Europe and abroad.

The dialogue on the future of Europe is another I was asked to contribute to. Shortly after, I got a county award. I was representing thousands of citizens. Kantar did fantastic work. That is where it stopped. Europe did the work but we never led. In this House alone, I have heard questions about the local community development committees, LCDCs, strategic policy committees, SPCs and even the PPNs, themselves. How is this even happening? In a personal capacity, I got a global award for social impact at the UNESCO headquarters last month. I got similar accolades at national level through the Irish Centre for Diversity and indeed at county level.

Could I ask Senators to look at the Oireachtas hearings on disability on 8 April? It could be very informative for their work.

An Cathaoirleach

Local democracy.

Mr. Donal O'Shea

Fair enough. The culture of almost paranoia I see through PPNs involves many committees. I am on too many of them. We do not need them. The point I am trying to share is that collaboration will always be welcome but there is an obsession with creating committees for the sake of committees, and deflection and evasion as opposed to results and outcome. As Senators Cassells and Black said, whether it is the input of the town councils or the PPNs, we all respect the opportunity for inputs and we are all essentially in it for the same concept, but whether it is town councils or PPNs, there has to be a sense of collaboration. We have to identify through those collaborative processes what the priorities are and then doing them. Nike has global recognition of that logo and "Just Do It". While maybe it is symbolic, I would suggest when each county hall buys into this philosophy, whether it is for a bin or an artifact on a counter, they could have WD40, because policy not being fluid is the contributing factor to recurring themes here. The Seanad needs to lead on this.

We will do what we can in PPNs. As Senators said, I have spent significant time, beyond my remit, with the PPN. It is primarily because of having been in the media and hearing back from people about the consequences to individuals. That is what this is ultimately about. We get too bogged down with referencing communities, whether the geographical or the entity, but ultimately everything goes back to the citizen. We have not grasped that understanding adequately.

An Cathaoirleach

I welcome Killinarden Community School from Tallaght to Seanad Éireann for the discussion on the future of local democracy. If any of them are of the age, I hope they all vote or, most importantly, that they are registered to vote.

Mr. Michael Murphy

I will comment on the restoration of the former borough and town councils. I appeal to this committee and Members of Seanad Éireann, who are our champions at the national level, to put the restoration of the former borough councils and, I believe, town councils over a certain population threshold back on the agenda. I am conscious that this is a political assembly and that we are heading into a general election. Political parties are framing their manifestos. The restoration of the former five borough councils and town councils over a certain population threshold should be put back on the agenda. Coming into a general election is an opportune time, notwithstanding the wider importance of the empowerment of local government and, as I keep saying, the better resourcing of local authorities.

Regarding my European role, there is real momentum across the local government sector for improved, better engagement with the European Union. There is an appetite to better understand EU policy and, in particular, EU funding opportunities. I will share our strategy for an enhanced Irish Regions European office based in Brussels and indeed the establishment of eight EU affairs officers based here in Ireland, who are an excellent resource for the 31 local authorities. That strategy has been presented to the Department of the Taoiseach. That strategy is currently with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage for consideration. I believe it is under active consideration at the moment. I would appreciate the support of this committee and the rapporteur. The timing is perfect. I keep coming back to the 2026 Presidency that is fast approaching.

To answer Senator O'Reilly's question, the voice of local and regional authorities is being heard at the European level. There is a realisation in the Commission that the meaningful involvement of local and regional authorities in the EU policy and legislative framing process is crucial. One only has to look at our really ambitious targets in, for example, the context of the implementation of the European Green Deal and the digital agenda. Those ambitious targets will only be met with the meaningful involvement of local and regional authorities. Of course, the European Parliament is the main actor at the European level, but there is a realisation now that local and regional authorities are crucial.

I thank the committee for this opportunity. I also thank Seanad Éireann for being a champion of local government, its empowerment and better resourcing.

An Cathaoirleach

Since I know he has to go for a train, I will skip across to councillor Tony Fitzgerald so he will make his train.

Mr. Tony Fitzgerald

I thank the Cathaoirleach. I want to make the point of putting public health on the agenda for local authorities. It is an important point about what we want to do to develop local communities, cities, counties, towns and villages. One of the key factors for us in Cork city, as I said earlier, was to include health as a priority across the city and development plan. There has been a lot of discussion today on SPCs. My colleagues and I made a submission on each of the actions of the health and safety committee. We put the plan before every SPC then took it to corporate policy level, then before the council. It had been through all of the elected members and had also been before the external members who participated in the SPC.

If you put health at the heart of what you want to do in your local authority, then you will have a platform for other initiatives across environment, infrastructure, roads and housing, because that is key to where we want to be. It addresses mental health, health at work and early intervention for children. There is a golden opportunity in the aftermath of the local elections in June to have an elected representative from every local authority forming a healthy cities and counties committee, because that is absent here in Ireland while it is strong at local level elsewhere. It requires political will. I would be happy to facilitate any of that in the future because Ireland is seen by the WHO as one of the leading models of political intervention for health and well-being. If you look back at what we did during the Covid pandemic, making sure that meals on wheels were delivered, the gardaí looked after prescriptions for people and so on when people were cocooned, healthy cities and counties is very simple. It is about what is happening with health in a local community, whether a community garden or slí na sláinte. They are all part of health and wellbeing. This is not something new but needs to be key to what we develop.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Fitzgerald. I hope he makes his train.

Mr. Kevin Lynch

I come at this as a senior planner and assistant director with the Southern Regional Assembly with more than 30 years' experience as an official working in local government and the regional sector.

I would like to frame the discussion in respect of where Ireland will be in 20, 30 or 40 years. Let us take some of the key challenges we will face. We will have well over 1 million additional people the next 20 years. Half of those will be part of a natural increase and the other half will be the result of migration. We have massive climate change issues and transportation issue, etc. Ireland needs to transform itself in the next 20 years. The question is whether the current structures to achieve that are fit for purpose. The diminution of local government in the past might have been seen as dealing with awkward questions or difficult issues past and it was seen as avoiding those.

There are a number of factors when looking at it from the regional assembly perspective. First, in policy terms, Ireland has a good overall national policy in the national planning framework. There might be questions over it but it sets out a strategy for the next 20 years but the question is: how is it best delivered? Are the structures there to deliver that properly? The diminution of local government and the role of the councillor within that seriously hinders that development. In my view as an official, the elected members are key to this. It is not just that they hold the officials and government to account but that they provide leadership in facing difficult issues, and Ireland will continue to face difficult issues as we transform. That needs elected members to give that leadership. In my experience, and what I have seen happen, is there is no incentive for a councillor to do that given that the role is largely reduced to lobbying or whatever. Empowerment is structurally important for the country. It needs elected members to play a very important role in that. The national planning framework talks about balanced regional growth. When I say balanced regional growth, that is the entire country, Dublin and the rest of the State as well. That needs to have proper funding brought to the regional and local levels to deliver that. If we follow where the funding goes in fact, it does not follow the policy. I would prefer to see a structure where local governments are empowered with ten-year plans to implement government policy and that would result in far better delivery of that policy. The overly centralised nature of our structures is not efficient in the job that has been given and it does not deliver. Local empowerment is needed to better deliver at regional and local levels.

On the role of the regional assemblies in the context of the local authority system, I do not see any contradiction. The regional level should fulfil its purpose at the regional level. It does not need to be involved in all the areas that are properly the role of the local level. What that means is overall strategic issues or dealing with issues that are cross-boundary or in metropolitan areas where there is grouping needed. There is no need for regional bodies to get involved in every area of work.

Finally on the planning Bill, there is a lot of good there in relation to regional functions but the critical role of regional assemblies is in monitoring the implementation of the national planning framework. A worrying development there is that as part of that process, public bodies and others are required to input the regional assemblies on that as well as local authorities and it is proposed to take that out. That reduces our key connection between the national and local levels and that is very worrying.

Mr. Pádraig McEvoy

To answer the other question, one-size-fits-all was mentioned. That is a phrase that is used at European level about the ERDF funding. The Committee of the Regions - Michael Murphy has moved on there - but it registered or submitted a key concern to its environment that the European Union would be drawing back from involving decision-making on that €1 billion worth of funding that we talked about in Ireland that would go back to a central location in the State rather than be participative in the regions.

There is a lot of technical language in the planning policy at strategic level. If it could be summarised, once one goes past a county boundary, there is collaborative gain by two, three or more counties working together to site something or invest in something that is to the mutual benefit of all in a district beyond their own county. The regions create the forum in which that can happen but within the national planning framework. Some people are concerned, and maybe legitimately, that the regions might be overly centralising and aspect. While there is a hierarchy of policy - national, regional, county - in reality once the policy is created, the regions sit at the same level as the local authorities. They simply require decision-making and funding to follow a co-ordinated agreement between the local authorities. By having the local authorities participate in the creation of the policy, there is the equity and possibility for the balanced regional development that Mr. Lynch spoke of. Recent data from the census shows that growth has happened in all the subregions, known as strategic policy areas, SPAs, but the growth has been higher than expected in some and lower in others but then what happens if the funding is not earmarked in a way to deliver on the long-term objectives? Some areas of the country such as Fingal, Limerick, Wicklow, Stillorgan, north Kildare are not keeping pace with school delivery. There are three regional offices doing schools designs but that might not be enough. There is not enough parallel collaborative co-operation in the delivery of that type of infrastructure. I am not suggesting that goes back into the regional assemblies but I am describing having that partnership at the regional level to advocate for the local level, which ensures that those at the central level are not simply solving a small problem but are thinking of everybody.

An Cathaoirleach

I call the Cathaoirleach of Roscommon County Council, Mr. John Keogh.

Mr. John Keogh

I think the biggest challenge for the future of local democracy is attracting young people into it. We are seeing some progress in that respect but there are a lot of challenges. There is the discourse in how people are being treated. Senator Cassells spoke about people being able to connect with a public representative and know who they are. It is about walking down the street and being able to deal with those issues. Mr. Deane spoke of how so much of the work of Oireachtas Members is taken up with local issues. I find as a public representative that people come to me on issues I cannot deal with because they require me to contact my Oireachtas colleagues to try to get these issues addressed. That is not where Members' time should be spent. The local representatives should be fulfilling their role but they do not have the power to make those decisions on those issues. We really need to get back to empowering the locally elected representative. I hope reforms will take place that will bring back power to the local representatives. In planning, I accept that there is a national planning framework, which is a great plan and sets out the planning policy for the entire country, but, equally, at local level, certain planning decisions are refused that do not make logical sense. Issues of local need arise in rural development at a time we are talking about rural decline. We are trying to encourage people to remain in areas. Sometimes that means family members must need to live close to each other. That could be 10 km away; that is still local to people. However, planning decisions are being refused because the person is more than 4.5 km away.

That is local to me; 10 km is local to me. We need to see practical application of the policies that are in place and not what I consider an arbitrary approach to making decisions.

I am concerned that female representation is declining. We are losing people in County Roscommon. While new candidates are coming forward, it remains to be seen if they will get elected. I am concerned that we will see less female representation with fewer female candidates getting elected in the 2024 local elections. That is a real concern. We should all be concerned about that. The quota was mentioned. I agree with Nancy Pelosi who said that people should not vote for her because she is a woman but, equally, they should not vote against her because she is a woman. It should be on merit. The system brings its own challenge if we go down that road.

Mr. Peter Flynn

The question has come up in this session and in the previous two sessions as to whether town councils should be restored. While it is tempting to say that they should be, it would be a mistake to restore them in the form they had in the past. What I would like to see happening, if at all, is that the local areas would be used as the boundaries for the future. I have been very lucky. I have had ten years on the town council and ten years on the county council. The county council system is a dinosaur of a system that simply does not work. The town council system does work. What would work would be if we turned to the local electoral areas and bestowed the powers of the town council to the local area council which would then give them some real meaning. They could raise their own money and make their own determinations on every decision that comes before them. They would be knocking on the door at the following election.

As part of that, we need more councillors. I know this will go against some other discussions. It does not make sense to have full-time counsellors. We need part-time counsellors to ensure we get a strong mix of diverse people involved in politics. We would not get that with full-time politicians. We need to reduce the workload. Using the town council as an example, there were nine of us for 5,000 people but now there is one for 5,000 people and the population is growing. It is key that we have more. I will give the example in the west Mayo electoral area with an electorate of 20,000. We have four councillors all of whom are in the Westport town area. Newport is a town of approximately 800 people and Louisburgh is of similar size. They can never have an elected representative again, which does not make sense. That is not what democracy is about if we are talking about bringing it down to the lowest level. That is where we really need to be thinking how we reform local government. I would love if that was part of the discussion here.

I particularly commend the four former councillors on coming here to give their piece. It just shows the passion and the way people feel about local government. It is not simply a job where they get to pick up the cheque. Mr. Deane brings the perspective that we all need to understand. The whole principle of subsidiarity has been lost in Ireland. There was a big hoo-ha a few months ago when we increased the number of TDs by ten. However, we are going into a local election shortly and there will not be one single additional council seat in the country even though the population has boomed over that timeframe.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for facilitating this session. We have had a great debate and I look forward to the results.

Mr. Walter Lacey

I will respond to some of the questions. Senator Black asked if town councils should be restored. I believe the answer is "Yes". I do not suggest bringing back 1,000 extra counsellors. However, they should be restored and their numbers reduced in what remains in the county. The county town has lost its identity. There should be no increase in councillors but there should be a town council. Carlow has only three areas and so the other two areas would work away. Perhaps they could be given a vote in the Seanad election if they come back under a different umbrella. It would be helpful for Senators here.

Senator Cassells is right, from the town council point of view, the engagement with officials in and around the town at social events has almost totally gone. Some engineers who were originally in the town council are still engaging, but it is missing. The old town clerk, town engineer etc. were always available and there.

I actively campaigned for the retention of this body a number of years ago and I am glad that I did because it provides the opportunity for current counsellors and people like us outside to come up and make the case; it would not happen downstairs or across the corridor. Things like the referendums would have flown through without the effort of many of the Senators and I want to compliment them on that.

I have a final comment on the Fórsa representatives. The workers are often forgotten. I publicly compliment the local authority workers whom I have worked with for over 30 years. They have always been most helpful and are very knowledgeable. I still maintain some social engagement with many of them. They need to hear that because they are working under very difficult circumstances at the moment. I cannot offer the Cathaoirleach a vote in the next election, but the kettle is always on.

An Cathaoirleach

I look forward to getting back to Carlow and having some fig rolls at Mr. Lacey's kitchen table.

Mr. Peter Horgan

I just want to give an addendum to what I was talking about with data and the open data portal. Very often when data is mentioned, there is a knee-jerk reaction to say GDPR. Our two great excuses in Cork for not doing anything have been the Dunkettle Interchange and GDPR. The Dunkettle Interchange is done and GDPR is the only one that is left. In my area in Blackrock and Mahon, community CCTV is being installed for GDPR. I know this body and this House through my colleague Senator Wall and others. We lanced the boil of the GDPR issue with illegal dumping being brought into the circular economy Bill. There needs to be pushback against using GDPR as an excuse. The Dáil saw it a few years ago when GDPR came in with bodies suddenly saying TDs could not table parliamentary questions and could not make representations for people. That is starting to creep in again. It is stopping communities having confidence in local authorities and the Garda, which is put to the pin of its collar. They want to use the resources that are put there. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, gave €1 million last month for additional CCTV funding but it cannot be used because of GDPR. We need to push back against GDPR. It is designed to protect people, but it is being used to circumvent local authorities.

Mr. Harry Deane

I thank everyone for the kind comments they had about young people contributing to politics. Just I hope this will be a benchmark in future for young people to get involved and exercise their democratic rights and to appear before the Seanad Public Consultation Committee. It is a great addition to our democracy for members of the public as well as former counsellors and counsellors, highly experienced people in their own right, as well as me. Although I do not have the experience of being an elected representative, I have studied the area and wanted to give my piece on that. I do not have much more to say. I thank everyone and I hope this can be a way for young people to step into the consultation committee.

An Cathaoirleach

I call on the rapporteur to make final remarks.

Senator Shane Cassells

I would like to thank everybody. As I said in my remarks, the variety of the contributions today will be hugely insightful to our work. I again thank everyone.

An Cathaoirleach

I thank Mr. Deane along with his mother, Fiona, and his father, Francis, for coming in. In his case the future of local democracy in Meath-----

Deputy Shane Cassells

He told me he wants to run for Fianna Fáil so it is okay.

An Cathaoirleach

That announcement has been made in the Seanad.

I thank everybody for their contributions. As we have said before, one of the issues the public is concerned about is that they want the current systems to work better. They do not want new systems. We create many new systems and they have not worked better. That is why, in many instances, local and national democracy is being questioned. As I said earlier, and it is important in regard to Fórsa as well, it impacts not only elected representatives but public servants and people on the front line in so many areas, including our hospitals in the accident and emergency departments, where they have to tolerate behaviour that they should not have to tolerate, and the levels of this behaviour are growing and need to be addressed. We see the burning of trams and the police are unable to feel they can respond. We see protests outside the houses of public representatives. The incident last week was one more in a series. It cannot continue. The laws clearly are not defined well enough, are not there, or the Garda members feel they do not have the ability to deal with them at this time. That is the fundamental protection of democracy. We cannot allow people who want to undermine democracy the platform on which to do it. Democracy has to protect itself above all and protect the people who serve either as elected representatives and as public servants. Part of the reason so many people want to leave the public service and go to another job, as shown by the survey, is the abuse they are getting for which there are no consequences. If there were consequences, then we would not see the abuse because people would think twice before taking to Twitter or to the footpaths outside a person’s private house in the belief that intimidation is an appropriate form of protest. It is not in a democracy.

I thank my colleagues for being here. By some miracle we have actually finished before time, which is unusual for this committee. I thank attendees for making a contribution. For our next session, after the local elections, we have invited the leaders of the political parties to come here to discuss the draft recommendations of the report which the members of the committee will put together based on the witnesses' contributions. We will ask political parties to include in their general election manifestos and, it is hoped, a future programme for Government a plan to address many of the issues which were brought up here today so that we can strengthen local democracy and, in doing so, democracy in this State into the future.

The committee adjourned at 3.43 p.m. sine die.