The Irish system of local government is the weakest and most under-funded in the EU, with a Council of Europe Report in 2013 indicating that local authorities here have “less autonomy, less authority and less power” than their EU counterparts.

Speaking at a Citizens’ Assembly meeting in Dublin last weekend, Dr Diarmuid Scully said Ireland was ranked 43^rd out of 44 countries when it comes to our system of local government. Dr Scully is the academic adviser to the Mayor of Limerick Implementation Group.

Scully said the 2013 report was the most recent assessment of its kind, and that it highlighted the lack of Irish local authority involvement in education, healthcare, public transport and policing. Municipal authorities in most European countries are responsible for some or all of these services.

Ireland also has the fewest councillors per head of population anywhere on the continent.

This report corroborates Forsa’s 2019 research, which found that Irish councils have less autonomy from central government than local authorities in 39 European countries.

The research paper, Democracy Works If You Let It by Dr Mary Murphy of Maynooth University, found that only 8% of Irish public spending occurs at local government level, compared to an EU average of over 23%. And a quarter of the low Irish spend is not fully under local authority control.

Dr Murphy’s paper showed that Irish local authorities perform fewer functions than municipalities across Europe, with their roles largely confined to physical infrastructure and environmental and recreational services.

This had a negative effect on local employment, service quality, local jobs and economic development, and contributed to declining local election voter turnout.

Dr Murphy reiterated the need to “rebuild Irish local democracy and citizen participation to build strong local economies based on good jobs and decent incomes.”

Dessie Robinson, who heads Fórsa’s two local authority divisions, has indicated that members of the local authority and county councillors are optimistic that things may improve with legislative changes.

“Over the last few months Fórsa has been meeting with local authorities and other county councillors to open a dialogue on the best ways to improve the current situation. Those talks have been largely positive, and most are met with a sense of enthusiasm. Fórsa must work together with all parties in order to further the development of a local democratic reform,” he said.

Fórsa’s ‘More Power To You’ campaign has been calling for legislative changes to facilitate directly-elected mayors and restore and expand town councils, which were abolished in 2014. The research as presented above indicates that local democracy is being hampered by:

• A decade of austerity, which cut budgets and slashed council staffing by a quarter
• The centralisation of services like water, driving licences and higher education grants
• The privatisation of services like refuse collection and housing, and
• Excessive executive direction and new management processes that have increased bureaucratic powers at the expense of political representatives.

The campaign is seeking commitments from political parties, and candidates in the upcoming council elections, on a range of local government reforms covering waste, water, housing, and energy services.

Visit the More Power To You campaign page HERE.