COMMENT: Do our councillors deserve a pay rise?

IF SEANAD Éireann is perceived as being a retirement home for failed Dáil candidates, then surely a seat on the local council is akin to political pre-school.

Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way first. It’s a given that most of our councillors are hard-working, decent individuals who have been unfairly tarnished by the corrupt actions of a minority, as laid bare by planning tribunals and media revelations over the years.

Last year’s ‘RTÉ Investigates’ programme on the shady dealings of a handful of councillors once again cast the workings of local government in a most unfavourable light. At the time, I wrote that the exposé made an arguable case for the removal of elected councillors from the planning process entirely. After all, most meaningful decisions are made at executive level in our local authorities and planning applications deemed to be of national strategic importance go straight to An Bord Pleanala anyway. 

So I was somewhat bemused to read recently that a representative body for councillors has been making the case for a 40 per cent hike in their basic salaries. To be fair, not all councillors believe that such an increase can be justified in the current climate.

Those in favour argue that local government reform in recent years, which has seen a reduction in the number of councillors, has greatly increased their workload. Some of them are barely being paid the minimum wage, the poor lambs. I imagine that the humble stipend they get from the taxpayer is not enough to live on, nor is it supposed to be; it’s merely a token gesture to help keep the wheels of local democracy turning. In other words, don’t give up the day job. If you want to take on the burden of being a councillor, the motivation should not be a financial one.

And for many it’s not. Indeed, being elected to your local authority is still seen as being the first stepping stone to the Dáil. It allows councillors to build a local support base and cut their political teeth in their communities. Many of our recently elected TDs will have been familiar faces on councils over the years. 

Yes, it was hard and often thankless work at times, but all those years in the trenches of local government gave them a platform to build their profiles and it eventually paid off.

There is a lot of industrial unrest around at the moment, from the Luas drivers to Tesco workers. 

Recently it emerged that some newly recruited gardaí were leaving the force due to financial hardship.

Wouldn’t it be particularly egregious if a councillor’s basic salary all of a sudden exceeded the starting wage of a newly recruited guard or nurse? 

Those advocating a pay rise for councillors should be careful they don’t unwittingly kick-start a debate into whether our local authorities even need elected members in the first place. 

If I were them I’d be keeping the head down.

[email protected]