Do we really need 32 County Councils to run local services?

gandalf

Following on from the Water Charges thread I would like to tease this out a bit more.

We currently have 32 councils servicing a population of 4,239,848 with councils serving from 28,950 people in the smallest to 506,211 in the largest. You have duplication of services like IT, Accounts, HR etc. You have duplication of roles, duplication of resources like equipment all of which is a waste for a country of our size. We need to merge these councils into Supercouncils.

I would propose something along the lines of the following.

4 Super councils.
Leinster serving 1,107,947 people
Dublin serving 1,187,176 people
Munster serving 1,173,340 people
Connacht/Ulster (IE side) serving 771,385 people

With maybe one central IT function serving them all. So come on what are your ideas for streamlining our local authorities or can you justify to me why we should maintain the status quo?

(figures taken from the 2006 Census figures from the CSO website)

Laminations

deadtiger wrote: »

Following on from the Water Charges thread I would like to tease this out a bit more.

We currently have 32 councils servicing a population of 4,239,848 with councils serving from 28,950 people in the smallest to 506,211 in the largest. You have duplication of services like IT, Accounts, HR etc. You have duplication of roles, duplication of resources like equipment all of which is a waste for a country of our size. We need to merge these councils into Supercouncils.

I would propose something along the lines of the following.

4 Super councils.
Leinster serving 1,107,947 people
Dublin serving 1,187,176 people
Munster serving 1,173,340 people
Connacht/Ulster (IE side) serving 771,385 people

With maybe one central IT function serving them all. So come on what are your ideas for streamlining our local authorities or can you justify to me why we should maintain the status quo?

(figures take from the 2006 Census figures from the CSO website)

I agree that the super councils idea is the best way to reform. +1 from me

biko

Sounds good

Sleepy

Certainly in favour.

They'll need regional / local offices in each large town / county but certainly no need for the amount of LA's we have at present considering how little power they actually have and the cost savings which could be obtained by consolidating.

Tipp Man

Well this is an obvious solution and like so many it could so easily be put into practice, BUT the unions and PS attitude would be sure to see it fail and would never even let it get off the ground

anymore

I am afraid there are far too many vested interests to allow this to happen !
In Cork we have a City manager and a County manager, a City Lord Mayor and a Count Mayor and of course separate City Council and County Council not to mention numerous Urban District Councils.

Thats a whole lot of gravy trains, salaries, expenses and god knows what else to put at risk by rationalising it.
The Fg County Mayor, last year, suggested in repsonse to a suggestion of merging City and County, that maybe Councillors should be made full time jobs ! Logic ?

gandalf

TBH I think we are getting to a stage in this country where an awful lot of us are fed up feeding these "gravy trains". It is going to take someone with an incredibly strong back bone to implement something like this but I believe it is necessary if we are going to make this country a better place for our children to live.

(as a side note can someone direct me towards where I can find a list of the number of employees in each local authority, tried google but not coming up with any clear details)

Overheal

deadtiger wrote: »

Following on from the Water Charges thread I would like to tease this out a bit more.

We currently have 32 councils servicing a population of 4,239,848 with councils serving from 28,950 people in the smallest to 506,211 in the largest. You have duplication of services like IT, Accounts, HR etc. You have duplication of roles, duplication of resources like equipment all of which is a waste for a country of our size. We need to merge these councils into Supercouncils.

I would propose something along the lines of the following.

4 Super councils.
Leinster serving 1,107,947 people
Dublin serving 1,187,176 people
Munster serving 1,173,340 people
Connacht/Ulster (IE side) serving 771,385 people

With maybe one central IT function serving them all. So come on what are your ideas for streamlining our local authorities or can you justify to me why we should maintain the status quo?

(figures taken from the 2006 Census figures from the CSO website)

Theres this thing called Dublin, and this idea called Decentralization....

Besides you already have a Supercouncil, its called the Dail.

Sleepy

I think you entirely missed the point of this Overheal...

gandalf

Overheal wrote: »

Theres this thing called Dublin, and this idea called Decentralization....

Besides you already have a Supercouncil, its called the Dail.

So you are saying you are happy with the way things are then? Or is it just sarcasm for sarcasms sake?

simonj

Unless they are accountable, dump them - the amount of corruption and inefficiency in Galway alone is staggering

Some councils should be merged or resized, the difference in representation between a person in Dublin or Cork versus someone in Clare is astounding

County managers, and even department heads should be directly elected positions, every 2 years with a recall facility

amhrannua.com

gandalf

simonj wrote: »

County managers, and even department heads should be directly elected positions, every 2 years with a recall facility

That I wouldn't agree with at all. We need to have people in those positions who are professionals and while accountable not subject to the whims of popular opinion. They are directed on policy by elected councillors.

The function and power given to councillors should be expanded dramatically and they be made full time positions. TD's should no longer have any input into local authorities and in fact should be discouraged quite strongly from attempting to influence councils at all.

simonj

I would not consider my county manager to be in any way a professional, and managers, department heads etc who are found to collude with developers etc should be answerable in the same way TD's should be.

There are too many civil servants - especially at a local level, who do not answer for incompetance, inaction and this needs to be addressed

It is worth looking at other systems for local government - like the swiss concept of local democracy, surely in an age of talent show voting there can be a place for greater public collective decision making

gandalf

simonj wrote: »

I would not consider my county manager to be in any way a professional, and managers, department heads etc who are found to collude with developers etc should be answerable in the same way TD's should be.

No people who do that should be fired and prosecuted.

There are too many civil servants - especially at a local level, who do not answer for incompetence, inaction and this needs to be addressed

In a program of consolidation it would be. Bring in modern practices that the private sector already uses and weed out the dead wood. Incentivise those who want to work and fire those who don't. The time to do this is now, its perfect there are plenty of people who want to work.

It is worth looking at other systems for local government - like the Swiss concept of local democracy, surely in an age of talent show voting there can be a place for greater public collective decision making

Oh great Council Star or Vote X Factor or I'm a TD get me out of here. What works with the Swiss will more than likely not work here. What we need to do is to break the strangle hold of parochial politics in Ireland.

gandalf

Right just teasing this out here. I was hoping to have exact numbers of employees but I don't so I working from computer users in these organisations which I do have an idea of.

With the smallest council with have 1 employee serving 200 people.

In the largest we have 1 employee serving 400 people.

With this alone you can see the kind of savings I am talking about. You start to consolidate this down more then you can raise this ratio to lets say 1 to 500 or 1 to 600. Given that wages seem to make up most of the spend for the Local Authorities this will save a lot of taxpayers moneys and free up resources for renewal of our water systems for example.

Again if someone can find me the employment figures broken down by local authorities I would really appreciate it.

ectoraige

Rather than going on a provincial basis, how about basing your idea it around the National Regional Authorities which are already in place?

There is a need for centralisation of certain services, the problem with decentralisation was it was done for the sake of it, with little apparent regard for what makes sense.

For example, there should be a single means-testing body in the state who is a single point of consultation for any public body that has to implement policy based on their customers means.

However, there will always remain a need for effective neighbourhood-level representation. A Munster Council may not be the best place to press for a street-light in Ballingeary.

gandalf

ectoraige wrote: »

Rather than going on a provincial basis, how about basing your idea it around the National Regional Authorities which are already in place?

Not a bad idea we could take out the duplication in those authorities as well.

There is a need for centralisation of certain services, the problem with decentralisation was it was done for the sake of it, with little apparent regard for what makes sense.

Well this is the crowd that decentralised the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to Cavan a totally land locked county. What do you think?

However, there will always remain a need for effective neighbourhood-level representation. A Munster Council may not be the best place to press for a street-light in Ballingeary.

Yep that would have to be addressed alright.

Sulmac

I'd fully support such a proposal, but I would give these super-councils a lot more power (possibly including some tax-raising powers) and have an elected mayor (with real, executive powers) in each.

Though I agree with those that say there are too many vested interests or "jobs for the lads", unfortunately. You'd also get those who would be against removing the "traditional" county system (certain GAA-heads), particularly if they would be replaced with the National Regional Authorities (as ectoraige mentioned) that are unknown to most people - at least with these four councils the provincial system would be strengthened (bar Dublin), which most people recognise and feel have their own unique "identities" - especially in the rugby world. :P

edit: I just checked, and there are not 32 county councils. There are several levels of local government, including two regional assemblies, eight regional authorities, 29 county councils, five city councils (same powers as counties), 75 town councils (subordinate to counties) and five borough councils (same as towns, bar the name).

It's all here: http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/LocalGovernmentAdministration/

stuartfanning

It's amazing the 32 counties have remained largely intact. Reform of local government has never been a priority in ROI. Here in England they seem to be continually messing around with councils. Many counties have become Unitary authorities or have lost there urban part to newly created Unitary's.

Why not do away with the counties in ROI and have the provinces as Unitary local authorities? The ROI Ulster counties would have to be tacked on to another province.

Flamed Diving

I remember reading that Ireland has one of the most centralised government structures in the EU. To anyone who is educated enough to know, is that true?

baalthor

Flamed Diving wrote: »

I remember reading that Ireland has one of the most centralised government structures in the EU. To anyone who is educated enough to know, is that true?

I think we are well up there ... most of the funding for local government in Ireland comes from the central government.

We already have on average quite large county level authorities by European standards.
Dividing the population by the 34 county level authorities gives an average population of 132,000 per authority.
Comparable figures for other countries:
Denmark: 56,000
Sweden: 32,000
Finland: 16,000
Norway: 12,000
Germany: 190,000

The OP's new super-councils would give us some of the most populous local authorities in the world, would not solve the current LA issues and would create a host new issues.

For example:
Parochialism: This would get worse as each councillor would spend their entire time lobbying for their own county or area. Individual voters won't care about their new super-region, they will only be concerned about things like their local roads and services and will vote for the person who will "look after them".
If they can't do the job, then TDs will join in the fight for the spoils. Of course this already happens to an extent, but it would be much worse under the OP's proposals.

Cities and Towns: The super-councils would be bad news for larger urban areas.
For example in Munster, Cork, a city of roughly 200,000 people would have no mayor, council, or separate tax raising powers. It would be out-voted 4 to 1 in the Munster local authority. You can imagine how votes on de-centralizing services from Cork to rural areas would go; similarly for local tax or investment proposals.

And of course the first issue on the agenda for the new super-councils would be where to build the new super council head-quarters!

Amtmann

I generally agree with rationalisation, but I also think that baalthor above makes a very good point about the cities. They would need autonomy, and an extension of their bounds. It seems like what the OP is proposing is almost a federal structure?

goose2005

Dividing the population by the 34 county level authorities gives an average population of 132,000 per authority.
Comparable figures for other countries:
Denmark: 56,000
Sweden: 32,000
Finland: 16,000
Norway: 12,000
Germany: 190,000

You've ignored the fact that they also have authorities between country and county, and we don't. Finland has 6 Regional State Administrative Agencies (avg. 1m each), there are the German Lander (ave. 5m) etc. I don't know where you got 12k for Norway, it's more like 250k. Denmark recently cut itself from 15 counties to 5 regions (1.1m each). And Sweden is about 500,000 per county.

I don't see why we should maintain the ancient provinces, though. Would be better to have regions centred on (for example) Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, Drogheda-Dundalk, Sligo, Mullingar, Tralee, Clonmel. Look at Poland - 16 provinces, all with a big city in the middle.

anymore wrote: »

I am afraid there are far too many vested interests to allow this to happen !
In Cork we have a City manager and a County manager, a City Lord Mayor and a Count Mayor and of course separate City Council and County Council not to mention numerous Urban District Councils.

You forgot the VECs, town councils, etc,

Erbium

I just made a post about the Irish citizens being capable of voting for this type of smart type of remodeling the current failed system need.

Duplication of resources, data & other entities is indeed wasteful.
Technology is the key.

If it is inefficient, wasteful or dangerous. It simply should not exist.

Irish Tiger

An overhaul is needed but I dont agree with getting rid of county and local councils.

These should remain but i feel that these should remain while we move towards single seat constituancies. Give power to the local councils to do the work that is need locally. I think we will get people who are more in touch with local areas making decisions. The TD will be similar to a US senator.

Sulmac

ThePost.ie
Elected regional assemblies expected in new government plan
14 February 2010 By Pat Leahy Political Editor

A new system that would leave Ireland with three tiers of government is expected to be proposed in a white paper to be published before the summer.

The new system of regional government would include elected regional assemblies, and would result in Ireland having local, regional and national government tiers - as in many European countries. The legislation giving effect to the new system will be introduced next year, if Fianna Fáil and the Green Party agree on the proposals, which are being discussed by a cabinet sub-committee.

The Sunday Business Post understands that the regional government structures, answerable to elected regional assemblies, are likely to be granted a range of powers.

Some of these powers would be devolved from central government and some - such as planning - are likely to be transferred from existing local authorities.

Some in Fianna Fáil fear that the new proposals would erode the power of the 34 existing local authorities, and the party has set up an internal group to examine the plans.

There is particular unease among senators - who rely on county councillors for their support - about proposals that would limit the current councils’ powers. As well as elections to regional assemblies, the new structures are likely to feature more directly-elected mayors. The government last week approved the principles of legislation to allow for a directly elected mayor of Dublin.

The Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, has promised that an election for the post will take place this year, although it is unclear what powers a new mayor would have. It is thought, however, that Dublin will retain its existing four mayors, who are heads of the four Dublin local authorities.

The legislation is also likely to be influenced by the findings of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group, set up as a successor to An Bord Snip Nua with the intention of identifying savings in local government.

Sources say that there is significant scope for reducing costs in local government by pooling or sharing services between local authorities.

© Thomas Crosbie Media 2010.

Interesting proposals, but do we really need another layer of government and the associated QUANGOs that will come with it?