Councillors at loggerheads with chief

Rancour over reform of directors of services’ role

Anton McNulty

Members of Mayo County Council are unhappy with their chief executive’s decision to restructure the role of the county’s directors of services.
Under the proposed structures, which will be trialled over the next year, directors of services will no longer oversee the day-to-day running of the municipal districts. This responsibility will be given to local area managers, to be assigned. The six existing directors of services will then operate under the chief executive, Peter Hynes, and various local area managers will operate under the directors.
The county councillors were almost universally against the proposal at last week’s monthly meeting of Mayo County Council, arguing that they feel it will take powers away from the municipal districts.
Under the current structure, each municipal district is under the remit of a director of services. Many councillors are urging Mr Hynes not to take a Director of Services away from each district.

Trial will go ahead
However, Mr Hynes said the new system’s trial would go ahead, and he dismissed suggestions that each district always had a dedicated director of services.
He explained that when he was a director of services, he shared the role between the old Westport and Belmullet Electoral Areas and was also responsible for housing and Traveller accommodation.
“What we need to do is get the decision-making authority pushed up to a level which can be accessed in the municipal district … Whether you call that person a Director of Services and the person he or she reports to a Super Director of Services, I don’t care. The authority to make the decisions on the ground is needed … We then make best use of the time and skill sets of people through this organisation. It will give people a chance at other levels to take on responsibility and express their own potential,” he said.
His response was not met with enthusiasm by many councillors, who again brought up the issue of power being taken away from the municipal districts. The municipal districts were introduced after the local elections in 2014, and councillors were informed they would have more power and autonomy.
Crossmolina-based Fianna FΡil councillor Michael Loftus, who was elected in 2014, told the meeting he feels that since he became a councillor all the powers are being centralised to Castlebar.
“All I see is everything going to Castlebar, and when we want something we have to go to Castlebar to ask. One of the things we were to get with the municipal areas were powers to do work, and I do not see it.

Retrograde step
“I see this as a retrograde step, and I do not agree with us not having directors or whatever you want to call them. Every time we want discretionary money we have to fight and plead and negotiate here to get the money,” he said.
Independent councillor Richard Finn, who said he supported the creation of municipal districts, also criticised the removal of a director of services from each area.
“As a councillor I cannot imagine supporting anything less than what we have already in relation to a director of services. For the life of me, I can’t imagine how we are going to retract back to a lesser situation than we are now in,” he said.
Knockmore-based Independent Seamus Weir expressed his disappointment with Mr Hynes’s response given the ‘impassioned pleas’ from the councillors. He warned Mr Hynes that if he ‘pulls’ the Director of Services, they [councillors] will ‘deal with you afterwards’.
Mr Hynes replied that the decision was taken after a discussion last October, and that it will be reviewed once the trial has been running for a year.