D-Day for town councils

D-Day for councils


Neill O’Neill and Edwin McGreal
neilloneill@mayonews.ie
edwinmcgreal@mayonews.ie

CABINET will discuss local government reform today (Tuesday) at a meeting that is expected to spell the end of town and county councils in their current form.
Cathaoirleachs from all 114 local authorities in Ireland will meet Minister for the Environment and Local Government Phil Hogan at 11.15am at Dublin Castle, where plans for a wholly reformed system of local government are expected to be unveiled. The abolition of all town councils is likely to be signalled, along with wide-sweeping reform of local-government operations.
In Mayo, the number of elected representatives between the three town councils of Westport (9), Castlebar (9) and Ballina (9), along with Mayo County Council (31) looks likely to be halved.
In what will be the largest reform of the local government structure in Ireland since 1898, it is expected that a new system of local municipal authorities (area councils) will be established.
Speculation on the exact nature of the councillor cull and changes varies, but Castlebar Town and Mayo County Councillor Michael Kilcoyne explained to The Mayo News that he believes that Mayo will be split into four districts, three of which will have seven councillors each. The fourth, based around Castlebar, will have eight councillors. Castlebar would be the only town with a mayor, albeit elected by members and not the people.

Radical shift in Westport
If these proposals are implemented ahead of the next local elections in 2014, the number of council seats in Mayo would halve from 58 to 29. This will mean there will be one councillor for every 3,585 voters in the county, going on the total electorate and available statistics from the 2009 local elections in Mayo.
With an urban district electorate of 3,731, Westport town will be among the areas to be most hit by the plan. In 2009, nine town councillors and two county councillors were elected from the Westport urban area. Looking at the reforms purely from a numerical perspective, the town’s proportional representation at local government level will be decimated.
A national boundary commission will be established to reconfigure voting areas within each county, and its recommendation will ultimately decide which towns and villages in Mayo are assigned to which areas. The entire process could be completed by next spring.
Cllr Kilcoyne, a SIPTU trade union official, believes that while the Croke Park Agreement means no council staff or officials will lose their jobs, redundancy packages will be made available to tie in with the local-authority cuts.
Speaking earlier this year, Minister Hogan said he was mandated by a “reforming Government to drag the system of local government into the 21st century so that it delivered more to the community and put people first.”

Kilcoyne slams move
However, Cllr Kilcoyne feels such a proposal will moving Ireland further away from a democratic society.
“Phil Hogan’s assertion that this is giving power to the people is a load of nonsense,” he said. This is not power to the people, that was probably something Phil Hogan read in a book he doesn’t understand. The reality is that the managers, the directors of services and the council executive still have all the power and the people elected by the people, the councillors, will still have no power.
He said that people will really feel a cut when they try to get a councillor who once had only responsibility for a small area to do the same job in a much vaster area.
“As a town council in Castlebar, we could look at allocating a lot of money locally to projects like the Riverwalk in the town, now we could conceivably be looking at covering an area stretching from Lahardane to Shrule,” he said.

‘Retrograde’
At their meeting last week, Westport Town Council roundly criticised the plan, calling it ‘flawed’ and a ‘retrograde step’. All eight councillors at the meeting were firm in their opposition to the proposal, which they say is not just about saving themselves.
Their main objection lies in the fact that the money Westport Town Council collects locally and spends locally will now go into a ‘big black hole for central distribution by the executive of Mayo County Council.’
They also fear that with less people fighting for Westport at every opportunity, progress in the town will come to a halt.
Raising the issue, Cllr Myles Staunton said that there is a perception that these reforms are necessary, and that councillors are costing too much money, ‘neither of which are true’, he claimed.
“Westport Town Council has an annual budget of €5.4 million and expenditure to councillors is just one per cent of that, so the money argument does not stand up,” he said. Cllr Michael McLaughlin added that it costs him money to be a councillor, saying that time away from his business was impacting his livelihood greatly. He also said that the allowances and payments councillors receive ‘don’t even begin to cover the costs’. Other councillors echoed his sentiments.
Cathaoirleach Ollie Gannon said that he has no problem with reform in local government, but qualified this by saying “but the road the minister is going down is a disgrace.” He called for every council to be judged on its own merits, something Cllr Staunton backed up.
“It took a lot of hard work to make Westport a prosperous town and we operate within our budget, but this plan will punish us for our prudent management and good decision-making and the fruits of our success will be used to prop up less efficient councils and areas.”
Cllr Keith Martin said that while some people love to cut councillors down at every opportunity, Westport Town Council has been a leader, an innovator and a facilitator.
Cllr Brendan Mulroy also spoke of the council’s many initiatives and achievements, each of which he said combine to create the core fabric of Westport. He also said that the large number of community groups, clubs and other organisations that depend on Westport Town Council for funding through amenity grants and other means of support would now be the biggest losers.

‘Attack on democracy’
Cllr Christy Hyland, Fine Gael whip on the Municipal Authorities Association of Ireland, also slammed the move. “Unfortunately some town councils are not working, in fact some are a disgrace, but it seems now we all have to suffer. Town councils are the closest tier of government to the people and this is an attack on democracy. Reform is needed, but not the type we are going to get,” he said.
At a Fine Gael party conference earlier this year, Cllr Hyland had raised the roof when he told Minister Hogan that on the back of the party’s biggest victory with the most successful local and national elections in their history, the Minister would go down in history as the general who turned around and ‘shot the foot soldiers’.
However, Cllr Kilcoyne had a strong message for his counterparts in Westport yesterday.
“I hear Labour and Fine Gael councillors like Keith Martin and Christy Hyland in Westport whining and crying but they will follow the party line, and that’s not good enough. If you feel strongly enough about something, you should walk away … If I was a Fine Gael or Labour councillor, this would be a red-line issue for me. The government is shooting all its foot soldiers and the foot soldiers are standing for it.”

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