The Green Party have said the government “lacks ambition” as the government attempts to restore some form of power to local democracy.
This week, the government’s taskforce on local democracy published a report which stopped short of recommending the re-creation of town councils, abolished during the austerity era, but recommended the creation of municipal councils and existing councillors given more resources to tackle issues on a hyper-local level.
Green councillor Oisín O’Connor, who serves as the party’s spokesperson on local government, said that the proposed reforms are lacking, and Ireland will continue to rank alongside Hungary, Moldova and Russia in terms of powers afforded to local democracies in Europe.
While we discuss more on what exactly the government plans to do with these local government reforms on page eight, O’Connor discussed what the reforms could mean from a councillors perspective.
The Glencullen-Sandyford councillor explained, “as local councillors, we hear people’s frustrations with how local councils operate all the time.”
“This set of proposals from the government will do nothing to improve accountability and meet the needs of local communities. The open secret about local government in Ireland is that 99% of the power to spend money and set policy sits with unelected officials, and elected councillors have almost no say.”
He said that the government’s plan does nothing more but “adding a new committee, a minor rejigging of some existing council committees and not much else.”
“The government have missed the whole point. After 6 years as a councillor, I can say for certain that the problem with local councils is not that there aren’t enough committees,” he remarked.
“What we have here is another shiny list of tokenistic proposals from a government who want unelected officials to continue to have power to spend money and set policy, rather than representatives elected by their communities.”
“The problems with the Local Democracy Taskforce started before it ever met. The members of the taskforce were a collection of powerful civil servants, Fine Gael councillors, Fianna Fáil councillors and a solitary independent councillor,” he noted.
O’Connor stated, “if the government wanted recommendations that would truly make local government more effective and accountable, they would not have filled the taskforce with those who benefit from the status quo.”
“Ultimately it will be communities who lose out from the government’s nothing plan for local democracy, and Ireland will continue to rank as the most centralised government in Europe for years to come.”