Mayo's take on the 'diabolical decline' of local democracy
by Caoimhin Rowland
Mayo county councillors of all hues made the trip to the capital to take part in a discussion in the Seanad chamber on a day Annie May Reape described as ‘one we’ll always remember’.
The topic was the complete and utter diabolical scenario surrounding local democracy in Ireland. They’re not my words, they’re the words of councillors who are elected by the masses and face the brunt of abuse, vitriol and complaints.
How and why anybody does it is beyond me.
Council meetings in Mayo are characterised by frustration, the few people we do elect to represent us are consistently told by officials in the county council that they do not have the answer.
The reason why housing takes so long to be complete is up the food chain of the department or roads and transport issues can only be spoken about with Transport Infrastructure Ireland.
Water is another vestige of Phil Hogan’s destructive time in office.
It was he who abolished town councils and introduced Irish Water to the arena, another bane of local councillors.
Local democracy in Ireland currently works like poor customer support.
You ring up furious, ready to release venom, but before you can let spittle fly, you’re met by a robot who tells you to punch in a few extra numbers. You say, now I’ll have my problem heard. After the deafeningly chirpy holding music relents, you get an agent.
Finally, you think, they can resolve the matter but they can’t, it’s above their pay grade.
Cue holding music, waiting and being passed from number to number while the matter never gets resolved.
Anger subsides and often apathy grows, the latter one of the most worrying emotions when it comes to voter turnout, particularly for local elections.
The most worrying thing is that democracy isn’t like our phone plan or internet provider.
We can change our councillors at the ballot box but we can’t vote in a new system of governance.
Phil Hogan and Fine Gael did that in 2014, under the guise of cutting the number of politicians.
Ask people on the street if they want to see more councillors in Mayo. Not a fear in hell would anyone say yes, but we could of course get a few more TDs handy as per the constitution.
Councillors can do very little.
In reality, they are the most accessible to make representation, they’re the first agent on the customer service hotline who gets the brunt of attack, but have no say in planning, housing, water and barely a contribution on roads planning anymore.
The amount available to municipal districts for a year is rather miserly, less than half a million per district after wages and contributions are removed.
Councillor Mark Duffy is someone who wasn’t on any town council and is rare in the fact he entered politics from outside the typical path.
He spoke in An Seanad about the need to reintroduce town councils as they offer a route to politics for people like him and it would no longer be such a radical jump from citizen to public representative for tens of thousands of people.
His ideas, which were warmly received by senators, included introducing gender quotas and mandatory age brackets to see people from all backgrounds involved in the decision-making process.
Town/urban councils had been around since well before the state began, a launch pad for political careers and a point of contact to help keep towns improving.
The report will be collated and published promptly, as Mayo Senator Lisa Chambers stated.
But whether or not it sits on the shelf or comes to fruition will be up to TDs who seem to prefer less power in the regions and more in their pockets.