Reform Local Government

mayo | politics / elections | news report Friday October 19, 2007 17:50 by Cllr Keith Martin

Cllr Keith Martin is encouraging the citizens of Mayo to take part in the review of Local Government, which was launched recently by the Minister of the Environment John Gormley TD.

The reform programme is already underway with the Minister requesting submissions from the general public and interested bodies, which will feed into a Green Paper on local government reform, to be published in the next six months. That Green Paper will outline the various reform options to be considered on how local authorities operate.

The Labour Party councillor has already made a submission to the Dept of Environment and is urging the voters of Mayo to do the same. "I believe that the best government is the government which takes place at the lowest possible and realistic level. I believe reform of local government is vital and the people of Mayo have got to make their voice heard in this issue. Stronger local government will mean more services are delivered locally and not as hand-outs from Dublin. I believe it is time to end Local Administration and time to begin real Local Government where the people pick their decision makers and those decision makers are answerable to the public."

In his submission to Minister Gormley's Office Cllr Martin is calling for abolition of the County/City/Town Manager position and its replacement by Chief Executive who would advise the council and execute the council's policy.

Cllr Martin's submission also goes to call for the introduction of Directly-elected Mayors for all local authorities. This office would carry with it responsibility for most decisions in association with a small cabinet of councillors.

According to Cllr Martin "We must also strengthen the role of the elected council, in order to provide the citizen with accountable public services. Councillors must the have power to seek accountability from any agency, whether public or private, which is providing public services in their area.

"The benefits of a directly-elected mayor at town/city/county level are many such as visible and accountable leadership and are likely to be powerful leaders by nature. Directly elected Mayors also open up politics to civic leaders and business people and will wield 'clout' on behalf of their authority with national government and other public and private bodies. Finally transparency of election and high visibility of the directly-elected Mayor would lead to less corruption, not more."

Cllr Martin concludes his submission by saying "we need to give authorities directly elected mayors with a mandate and vision for their town's future, we need to give councillors more powers to effect change and policy and remove the role of officials from policy and let mayors make the day to day decisions based on advice from their officials."

According to Minister Gormley "Local councils have traditionally provided the public with key basic services, from roads and water to housing and waste management. Their role has expanded in recent years to cover a huge range of functions to proactively build communities, promote tourism, drive economic development and pursue social inclusion. I want to hear from the citizen, the customer of the local council, on how they think the local government service can be improved."

Submissions should be sent to Eoin Corrigan at the Local Government Project Development , Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Custom House, Dublin 1 or by email to eoin_corrigan@environ.ie