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Cork City boundary extension
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Je_suis_Jean wrote: »My argument is only fantasy if the law of economies of scale is suddenly disproved. Put the two together, cut out duplication, consolidate offices, streamline third party services and put the money saved towards actual services rather than bureaucracy and admin or better still, put the money saved towards lower property tax.
Agreed. Eliminate the talking shop that is Leinster House as well, and consolidate all decision making in Brussels. This will cut out duplication, consolidate offices, streamline third party services and put the money saved towards actual services rather than bureaucracy and admin or better still, put the money saved towards lower property tax.
:rolleyes:0 -
The Dublin Government merely adopted the colonial model of running the country when it achieved independence from the UK. We now have an extremely over centralised governance model, which has become more centralised since the establishment of the Dublin regime and we will end up with less accountability than we had when we were governed from London should the current regime implement this report.0
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Nearly every article since the report has been evidence based arguments against the merger. Big one in the Examiner today from UCC dept of govenrment. These people need to be listened to. But they won't.0
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Nearly every article since the report has been evidence based arguments against the merger. Big one in the Examiner today from UCC dept of govenrment. These people need to be listened to. But they won't.
Sure who needs experts or to listen to well researched, evidence based academic arguments from people who've spent their whole careers analysing the subject being discussed.
Didn't it all turn out grand when they ignored the economists and called them a big bunch of party poopers back in the mid 2000s?
The most important thing is to listen to some lad in the pub, government back benchers and vested interests!
It's the Irish way! It's our culture and anyone who says otherwise is a weirdo or one of those trolls.0 -
There was actually a councellor from Bantry I think it was on Twitter during the week saying that they will finally get the equality they wanted. Thats the kind of rubbish we will have to put up with, how can you even compare Bantry and lets say Togher, its two completely different worlds, different people, and more importantly different needs.
We need this citys politicians to grow a pair and stand up for this states so called second city. We are Cork ffs, we should be at the top of the table fighting our corner.0 -
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munstermagic11 wrote: »So someone who disagrees is a troll? Nice to have a debate with you.
I was being *sarcastic* as anyone who attempted to argue that not inflating the property market was immediately shushed and told they were basically trolling / party pooping.
There's a lot of attempting to shut down debates on issues going on at the moment.
What I was trying to say was that Ireland's political establishment can go into group think mode and just ignore all advice on issues like this.
I see a similar government consensus arriving on this.
It's going to end up destroying Cork City and you'll have a low density, sprawling mess as a result.
The city should also have to have a have a local referendum before it loses its council too. It's absolutely crazy to think a 800 year+ old entity could just be abolished at the whim of a minister like that.0 -
I'm actually going to start ringing local TDs today. I'm not voting for anyone who supports this merger.0
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If you do feel strongly that this shouldn't happen though please email or ring the local TDs in your constituency.
They'll take it seriously if they know it might cost them their seats.
For Kathleen Lynch in particular this is very dodgy as it has a major potential to remove policy focus on the more marginalised areas of the Northside.
She'll be doing her constituents no favours by allowing this to happen.0 -
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Please explain how its going to be a low density sprawling mess ?I was being *sarcastic* as anyone who attempted to argue that not inflating the property market was immediately shushed and told they were basically trolling / party pooping.
There's a lot of attempting to shut down debates on issues going on at the moment.
What I was trying to say was that Ireland's political establishment can go into group think mode and just ignore all advice on issues like this.
I see a similar government consensus arriving on this.
It's going to end up destroying Cork City and you'll have a low density, sprawling mess as a result.
The city should also have to have a have a local referendum before it loses its council too. It's absolutely crazy to think a 800 year+ old entity could just be abolished at the whim of a minister like that.0 -
There is now a petition relating to the proposed merger. You may like to sign it https://www.change.org/p/cork-city-council-hold-a-local-referendum-on-the-merger-of-cork-city-into-cork-county-council0
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Because having a tightly defined City area tends to ensure that city-type urban development happens in that area, creating a defined city with a green belt around it.
Ireland's tendency is towards ultra low density quasi-rural "suburban" development
If the city is no longer defined, then you'll just get the usual low density, unplanned scatter that you see in Kildare and West Dublin.
It's just asking for major planning problems.0 -
Because having a tightly defined City area tends to ensure that city-type urban development happens in that area, creating a defined city with a green belt around it.
Ireland's tendency is towards ultra low density quasi-rural "suburban" development
If the city is no longer defined, then you'll just get the usual low density, unplanned scatter that you see in Kildare and West Dublin.
It's just asking for major planning problems.
If anything, I think you just made an argument for amalgamation. Having one council control this and enforce a green belt would work better than having multiple councils one of whom would benefit from ignoring this green belt.0 -
It won't though. No Irish authority in the history of the state has done that.
What you're going to end up with is either a council that increasingly focuses on the city and suburban region and ignores the rest of the county as it will suddenly be mostly urban with a huge rural hinterland. Or, you'll get a rural-focus council that will ignore the city's issues.
There's someone up the thread was asking what someone in Douglas has to do with Faranree - a lot more than someone in some parish Skibbereen has to do with Douglas or Faranree, that's for sure.
The problem is not about "us" vs "them" in a one area versus the next, it's the fact that urban and rural areas have completely different sets of challenges.
Someone sitting in a Blackpool has about as much in common with someone in a farm in West Cork as someone in Stoneybatter has with someone in Connemara.
It's made worse by the fact that Cork is actually a huge geographical area. It's actually 120km from Cork City to Castletownbear for example
Other than the city and county share the same name, they're extremely different places.
This is going to create a huge mismatch and it could end up either hurting marginal rural areas or marginal urban areas.
I also think urban issues impact the big towns in County Cork and they should have town councils.
Abolishing the town councils was no solution. We had town councils in some towns and not in others based on some snapshot of how the country was in 1921.
What should have happened was a total reform of the county councils and structure of government, to allow town councils to exist without extra burden of costs.
All I see is a government that has one solution to reform : abolish and centralise.
This isn't a win for the county, it could in fact cause serious problems in rural areas if the focus of Cork CoCo changes to the city / suburbs. Likewise, it's absolutely not a win for the City as it will result in a lack of focus there.
It's unlikely to reduce overheads as there's been absolutely no proposal whatsoever for slimming down services. In fact, services are already rather slim as they are.
Has anyone actually objectively measured whether the city council / county council is efficient or not?
We actually keep our local government budgets so low that they are usually incapable of doing things that they should be doing anyway!
So who does this benefit?
What's the point of doing it?
It's most likely going to make already rather unaccountable and badly structured local government even less accountable and more amorphous.
Who's driving this and why? That's what I want to know.
It seems absolutely missing any kind of democratic oversight, there's been no great call for it by anyone in Cork. So what's going on exactly?0 -
Because having a tightly defined City area tends to ensure that city-type urban development happens in that area, creating a defined city with a green belt around it.
Ireland's tendency is towards ultra low density quasi-rural "suburban" development
If the city is no longer defined, then you'll just get the usual low density, unplanned scatter that you see in Kildare and West Dublin.
It's just asking for major planning problems.
Ok now you've undermined your whole argument.
Whom do you think implemented the green belt in the first place ?
What densities do you think the County Council have in Metro Cork?
The two councils made their pitches and business cases, the County made a better business case.
The city will benefit most in the long run.0 -
I haven't undermined my whole argument.
Creating a huge mess without any kind of boundary between city and country is going to make it almost ungovernable.
There's a logic in extending the boundary.
This effectively scraps the city and creates a huge regional authority with no focus whatsoever.
Also, the business case is only a part of the argument. Local governments aren't profit making companies. They have to provide services and actually be responsible to their citizens through democratic elections. Making the authorities more and more remote is not a way of improving that.
This isn't and shouldn't be talked about as if it's Tesco merging with Dunnes. It's a totally different scenarioz
Also what business case?!
As yet, I've seen zero hard evidence of any efficiencies or improvements for business.
All I've seen is a lot of assumptions based on zero facts.
Also why do businesses assume rates would go down?!
All that will happen is the city traders will be used as a financial support for the whole county now and the state will see it as a way of cutting funds to rural areas that can now be paid for from City rates ...0 -
Reputable Rog wrote: »The city will benefit most in the long run.
the city will go from being its own autonomous democratic institution, to being a third of one larger institution. How will that benefit it?0 -
I haven't undermined my whole argument.
Creating a huge mess without any kind of boundary between city and country is going to make it almost ungovernable.
There's a logic in extending the boundary.
This effectively scraps the city and creates a huge regional authority with no focus whatsoever.
Also, the business case is only a part of the argument. Local governments aren't profit making companies. They have to provide services and actually be responsible to their citizens through democratic elections. Making the authorities more and more remote is not a way of improving that.
This isn't and shouldn't be talked about as if it's Tesco merging with Dunnes. It's a totally different scenarioz
Also what business case?!
As yet, I've seen zero hard evidence of any efficiencies or improvements for business.
All I've seen is a lot of assumptions based on zero facts.
Also why do businesses assume rates would go down?!
All that will happen is the city traders will be used as a financial support for the whole county now and the state will see it as a way of cutting funds to rural areas that can now be paid for from City rates ...
First of all the city traders will benefit from lower commercial rates as a new blended rate will be introduced.
Cork Chamber are fully behind the merger.
The merger proposal contains recommendations for more devolved powers for Cork from central government, effectively Cork now has the opportunity to become a proper City Region.
Almost Da Peoples Republic all de Rebels dearly desire.0 -
Reputable Rog wrote: »First of all the city traders will benefit from lower commercial rates as a new blended rate will be introduced.
Cork Chamber are fully behind the merger.
The merger proposal contains recommendations for more devolved powers for Cork from central government, effectively Cork now has the opportunity to become a proper City Region.
Almost Da Peoples Republic all de Rebels dearly desire.
I'll believe that when I see it
The chamber will have far, far less influence over the new entity than it does over the City Council.
Why would they have a blended rate? The costs are not going to suddenly go down.
Also, the Government can't devolve power to Cork without legislation and it's likely if they did that every other county would want exactly the same thing, so you'd end up with a mess.
Other stuff the government said it would do:
Reform the Seanad ...?
Reform the Dail standing orders?
We had a referendum to allow the other universities (apart from NUI and TCD) to vote in the Seanad.
It took place in 1979 and 92.4% of voters voted in favour.
36 years later, it still hasn't happened.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for powers to be devolved to a regional Cork authority!0 -
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I'll believe that when I see it
The chamber will have far, far less influence over the new entity than it does over the City Council.
Why would they have a blended rate? The costs are not going to suddenly go down.
Also, the Government can't devolve power to Cork without legislation and it's likely if they did that every other county would want exactly the same thing, so you'd end up with a mess.
Other stuff the government said it would do:
Reform the Seanad ...?
Reform the Dail standing orders?
We had a referendum to allow the other universities (apart from NUI and TCD) to vote in the Seanad.
It took place in 1979 and 92.4% of voters voted in favour.
36 years later, it still hasn't happened.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for powers to be devolved to a regional Cork authority!
Yup, it's all a huge confidence trick. Rates will not go down. There will be no extra powers. This is a huge blow to cork.
Lots of coverage in yesterday's papers. All saying the same thing
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/cork-council-merger-amalgamation-will-downgrade-the-status-of-the-city-352781.html
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/minority-report-why-the-voices-against-cork-council-merger-plan-are-right-1.2347561
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/planning-experts-oppose-merger-of-cork-city-and-county-councils-1.2347876
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/planning-experts-say-merger-of-councils-would-fail-cork-353292.html0 -
And more
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/local-government-and-cork-1.2345913
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/local-government-bodies-and-cork-1.2347472
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/ourview/smiddy-report-torn-to-shreds--councils-amalgamation-debate-353153.html
note the authors and their backgrounds where are the pro merger arguments??? Where is the evidence?0 -
And more
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/local-government-and-cork-1.2345913
http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/local-government-bodies-and-cork-1.2347472
http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/ourview/smiddy-report-torn-to-shreds--councils-amalgamation-debate-353153.html
note the authors and their backgrounds where are the pro merger arguments??? Where is the evidence?
I know one of the authors, he's a former planner with Cork County Council and would be a pro merger if still in his former role.
UCC have a taken a position on the matter and they're not for budging and have shown unhelpful bias all along.
It was a stupid decision in the first place not to have a complete team of outsiders who could be objective about the matter.0 -
Reputable Rog wrote: »I know one of the authors, he's a former planner with Cork County Council and would be a pro merger if still in his former role.
UCC have a taken a position on the matter and they're not for budging and have shown unhelpful bias all along.
It was a stupid decision in the first place not to have a complete team of outsiders who could be objective about the matter.
UCC hasn't taken any position on anything. A number of academics who are experts on Local Government, planning, structures of government, economics, public finance etc etc have taken a keen interest in something that is happening On their door step and in their city.
The people who should be consulted on this are the citizens of Cork. Not a bunch of random independent observers from "outside".
Also it is absolutely the role of academics to analyse and discuss issues like this. Would you rather that just stuck to analysis of local government democratic deficits and dysfunctionality in China and Azerbaijan...?
Academia and journalism plays a huge role in public discourse in any democracy.
They've no obligation to be helpful to government policy or to argue things they don't agree with. That's not bias, it's expressing an opinion based on years and years of research, analysis and publication on these kinds of subjects.
The UCC academics commenting on this don't have any vested interests in this. It makes no difference to UCC. It's not funded by, part of or anything else by local government. It's simply a group of academics making an argument.
Pro merger people should be able to make a contrary argument. Perhaps they simply can't find anyone in academic circles, who studies local government or structures of government who agrees with the idea of abolishing a city council and merging it with a very large, very rural entity like Cork County Council.
What is being proposed here is very odd by any EU or broader international comparison and Ireland is regularly criticised in literature about over centralisation and lack of local government powers, autonomy and accountability.
We've one of (if not the) weakest and most unaccountable systems of local democracy in the EU.0 -
We didn't even have local elections in the 1990s
The same councils sat from 1991 to 1999 due to suspensions of elections pending reform.
On top of that you'd dual mandates (TDs holding council seats) until 2004.
Then we wonder why we had planning corruption and a culture of lack of interest in local democracy.0 -
Reputable Rog wrote: »I know one of the authors, he's a former planner with Cork County Council and would be a pro merger if still in his former role.
UCC have a taken a position on the matter and they're not for budging and have shown unhelpful bias all along.
It was a stupid decision in the first place not to have a complete team of outsiders who could be objective about the matter.
That's a pretty odd response, to say the least. Why should the academics, researchers etc be helpful to the government process. Surely, their duty is to analyse the evidence and research the issues, not to provide a friendly service. Your speculation about One of the individual's supposed view had they been working in local government is equally odd.
As it happens, today's Sunday Times contains a major piece on the issue...it's yet another anti merger one, obviously.
Where are all the academics, commentators, experts in favour of the merger hiding?0 -
The logic of the Waterford and Limerick authority mergers even makes less sense the more you look at it.
A chunk of Limerick City's suburban area is in County Clare and a chunk of Waterford City is actually in Co. Kilkenny.
To get genuine efficiencies there, you'd have had to merge activities across the county line, not just merge with rural Co. Waterford / Limerick.
Now you're just going to get two lopsided cities that will develop into their counties. In both cases the county line is basically a river, which the cities effectively straddle.
In most countries you've several (or even quite a large number) of smaller councils making up a metropolitan area. It allows cities to expand flexibly.
If Cork were in France, you'd have probably 8 or 9 councils within a Cork Metropole area. That's probably a slightly extreme example, but it allows cities to be created out of very locally accountable modules rather than just big unitary blocks.
Things that need to be run at high level for a whole city, are. Public transport, sports facilities, overall planning for an urban area.
Then you've departmental and regional authorities that do things on a much wider area basis for whole regions.
You can do these things reasonably cheaply if you do them right as you don't duplicate services, you assign appropriate services to each level of council and the budgets stay relatively low.
Creating huge single authorities doesn't save money, if anything it'll just reduce accountability and make budgets much harder to monitor.0 -
The logic of the Waterford and Limerick authority mergers even makes less sense the more you look at it.
A chunk of Limerick City's suburban area is in County Clare and a chunk of Waterford City is actually in Co. Kilkenny.
To get genuine efficiencies there, you'd have had to merge activities across the county line, not just merge with rural Co. Waterford / Limerick.
Now you're just going to get two lopsided cities that will develop into their counties. In both cases the county line is basically a river, which the cities effectively straddle.
In most countries you've several (or even quite a large number) of smaller councils making up a metropolitan area. It allows cities to expand flexibly.
If Cork were in France, you'd have probably 8 or 9 councils within a Cork Metropole area. That's probably a slightly extreme example, but it allows cities to be created out of very locally accountable modules rather than just big unitary blocks.
Things that need to be run at high level for a whole city, are. Public transport, sports facilities, overall planning for an urban area.
Then you've departmental and regional authorities that do things on a much wider area basis for whole regions.
You can do these things reasonably cheaply if you do them right as you don't duplicate services, you assign appropriate services to each level of council and the budgets stay relatively low.
Creating huge single authorities doesn't save money, if anything it'll just reduce accountability and make budgets much harder to monitor.
So, if amalgamations like this...
- don't save money
- don't create efficiencies
- create less accountable regimes
- create more not less bureaucracy
- are less focussed
- are less democratic
Who gains? Would it be the citizens, or central government ?0 -
So, if amalgamations like this...
- don't save money
- don't create efficiencies
- create less accountable regimes
- create more not less bureaucracy
- are less focussed
- are less democratic
Who gains? Would it be the citizens, or central government ?
Neither in reality as the outcomes will probably be worse in terms of service delivery, accountability, cost control, ensuring that services get delivered where they're needed etc etc.
The only benefit will be one very supremely powerful administration at County Hall level.
I think this argument's rather naively being led by a group of people who think bigger = cheaper and who have done absolutely no research on how that might pan out in the context of a complex public service organisation.
Bigger and less accountable in public service tends to be about empire building by Sir Humphrey types.
Some people in Fine Gael seem to think that reform means abolishing various bit of the democratic parts of the system.
Where local government fails badly here is on budgeting and accountability. We need things like flexible budgets that don't have 'spend it or lose it' type approaches. Better financial information systems, more pooling of resources where needed (that doesn't mean merging entire bodies) through better regional cooperation.
Also, we could probably look at shrinking the number of councillors and creating something more like an executive mayor in towns and cities with a more streamlined council that can actually drive policy.
Similar could be applied in county councils, probably with more of a need for a larger council though due to the geographical spread, but you could definitely streamline things and make them a hell of a lot more accountable by bringing the executive power into the democratically elected domain instead of an appointed manager.
I would also suggest that some of the existing county boundaries make no sense from the point of view of services provision.
For example in Cork it would make a hell of a lot more sense to have cooperation between West Cork and Kerry County Council and North Cork and parts of Limerick and Tipperary, East Cork and West Waterford.
In reality, parts of West Cork have a lot more common ground with parts of Kerry than they do with Cork City. The only common ground in many respects is they're both called Cork.
That wouldn't necessarily mean ditching their county councils, but you could easily come up with ways of creating some kind of more logical cooperative units.
The areas where this is *really* urgent are actually very low population counties like Leitrim and Roscommon. It would make a lot of sense up that direction to create viable regional services that span several counties where needed e.g. on things like tendering for services, enterprise services, etc etc. That can be done without mergers.
I don't know why they're messing around with Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Galway when there were actually genuinely pressing issues in places like North Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon and so on where there are literally councils on the verge of, or actually in, bankruptcy situations.
Instead of looking at those, the government is doing p**ing off Cork.
Fine Gael has an incredible ability to self-distruct and come up with reasons why people shouldn't vote for them!0 -
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UCC hasn't taken any position on anything. A number of academics who are experts on Local Government, planning, structures of government, economics, public finance etc etc have taken a keen interest in something that is happening On their door step and in their city.
The people who should be consulted on this are the citizens of Cork. Not a bunch of random independent observers from "outside".
Also it is absolutely the role of academics to analyse and discuss issues like this. Would you rather that just stuck to analysis of local government democratic deficits and dysfunctionality in China and Azerbaijan...?
Academia and journalism plays a huge role in public discourse in any democracy.
They've no obligation to be helpful to government policy or to argue things they don't agree with. That's not bias, it's expressing an opinion based on years and years of research, analysis and publication on these kinds of subjects.
The UCC academics commenting on this don't have any vested interests in this. It makes no difference to UCC. It's not funded by, part of or anything else by local government. It's simply a group of academics making an argument.
Pro merger people should be able to make a contrary argument. Perhaps they simply can't find anyone in academic circles, who studies local government or structures of government who agrees with the idea of abolishing a city council and merging it with a very large, very rural entity like Cork County Council.
What is being proposed here is very odd by any EU or broader international comparison and Ireland is regularly criticised in literature about over centralisation and lack of local government powers, autonomy and accountability.
We've one of (if not the) weakest and most unaccountable systems of local democracy in the EU.
What makes them experts ? Only one of these 'experts' you refer to has ever worked in a Local Authority .
The rest of them sit scratching their holes and pontificating.
If they weren't in UCC they would be working for the Irish Times or the blow hole cycle on Marian Finucane every Sunday.
There is little point in bankrupting one local authority to appease another, the merger may not be ideal but in the absence of more devoloution to the regions it may the only way to accommodate the needs of both authorities and Cork as a whole.
At the end of the day a person in Newmarket or Baltimore is just as much entitled to services as someone from Bishopstown or Ballinlough.0
This discussion has been closed.
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