The savaging of the town councils

It’s ten years this year since town councils sat for the last time. They were one of the central planks of the then Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan’s local government ‘reforms’.

The definition of reform is to make changes to something in order to improve it. What Phil Hogan did was the very opposite.

The town councils – previously known as urban district councils – were a huge part of the political, economic and social fabric of the three largest towns in the county.

There were nine councillors on each town council so in one fell swoop, the number of local councillors in Mayo was almost halved.

I covered more than my fair share of town council meetings over the years. Mostly in Castlebar, occasionally in Westport whilst somehow never being dispatched to a Ballina meeting. Some meetings could be dull, some could see some amount of seafóid being talked but, here’s the thing, that didn’t tend to change at county council meetings either. There were plenty of fireworks too.

There was, though, at town council meetings a real sense of democracy at the most local level. People in the town had access to a much greater number of councillors than they do now. Issues which may not generate massive headlines like the taking over of estates by the council, the use of council outdoor staffing resources, Christmas lights and so on could be aired. They were important at a local level.

Westport was probably the poster child for town councils. The authority there was a great hub for community collaboration and partnership. Westport Town Council ran a tight ship in terms of planning – they knew what they did and did not want in their town centres and acted accordingly. Ballina ensured large multinationals were located in the town centre and not on the outskirts, as happened in Castlebar.

That’s before you even start talking about how well the town councils – and indeed the county councils – could operate with greater powers. That would constitute real reform. In many other European countries, local councils have significant input into the provision of housing, care for older people, policing, education and health services.

Instead what we saw over the decades in Ireland was a gradual erosion of the authority of the town councils and the influence of its councillors with powers removed from areas of health, housing, water services and roads.

So much so that when the town councils were abolished, there was not near the level of fuss that there should have been.

Trying to engender sympathy for politicians in modern-day Ireland is akin to Mayo people cheering for Roscommon. There were few tears shed that a good number of politicians were going to be out of a job. However, one has to wonder what the rationale for the abolition was because it certainly was not a significant cost saving. Town councils cost in the region of €1 million per annum to run. Now that’s a lot of money on a personal level but in terms of the running of our State, it is a pittance.

These ‘reforms’ have left Ireland with the lowest number of politicians per capita of all other EU member states. At a time when we ought to have been looking at ways to move away from a historically centralised system of government in this country, Phil Hogan doubled down and, to make matters worse, was let do it.

So you now have county councillors spread very thinly and with very little real authority. It means TDs the length and breadth of this country are flooded with constituency issues that really ought to be the responsibility of local councillors. TDs then are not able to spend as much time on national and global issues.

It is therefore the case that civil servants at national level have a much greater influence on the running of our country than many of our European counterparts. This has also become the case at local level where county council chief executives and various directors of services have considerable authority comparatively speaking, although budgets are still low by European standards.

A key requirement of local government in EU member states is the principle of subsidiarity which seeks to guarantee a degree of independence for a lower authority in relation to a higher body or for a local authority in relation to central government.

It will be interesting to see what level of influence John Moran, the recently directly elected Mayor of Limerick city and county can have. That is one actual reform since Hogan’s so-called reforms that has the potential to redress the balance. What more Ireland’s government can do to alter the current imbalance remains to be seen.

All of this leads to indifference among the electorate – witness the poor turnout at local and European elections.

The national turnout level for county and city council elections last month was a record low, 49.4 percent.

In 2009, the last town council elections, that figure was 57.6 percent. It fell dramatically for the first elections since the ‘reforms’, to 51.6 percent and has been dropping ever since.

Turnout in the last general election in 2020 was significantly higher, at 62.9 percent but don’t get carried away with that, we are well below average by European norms for general election turnout too. This level of disengagement is all too often glossed over. The people are speaking but the Government and the State are ignoring them.

Johnny Mee was a Labour town councillor in Castlebar for 35 years and he summed up the abolition succinctly in 2014.

“It’s a tragedy the town councils are gone. Phil Hogan has done a Cromwell job in abolishing the councils. I think he will be remembered as the man who destroyed local democracy in Ireland. I’m a man of 80 and in all my time involved in local government, this is the decision that saddens me the most,” said Mee.

The town councils provided an ear to the ground in a far greater way than county councils can. They were also a useful first step on the ladder for aspiring politicians. Most people, cynical about politics and politicians, would dismiss the relevance of this but we need accessible pathways to politics more than ever. You could get elected to Westport Town Council with less than 150 votes, witness current county councillor Brendan Mulroy who was elected in 2009 with 141 votes. Labour’s Keith Martin was elected with nine fewer votes. Mulroy would not be a county councillor now without having had the platform and profile from being a town councillor.

Michael Ring started his political life as an urban district councillor before going onto Mayo County Council, Dáil Éireann and the Cabinet table.

More than anything though, they provided a decent level of representation in the towns.

You have a situation now in Ballina where there is only one town-based county councillor, Cllr Mark Duffy, compared to 2009 where you had nine town councillors, two of whom were also county councillors.

Naturally the five county councillors in Ballina Municipal District will argue they represent the town too, which they do, but the point is the level of representation in the town has greatly diminished.

County councillors from rural areas often complained that the three towns were overly-represented versus the rural areas of Mayo, having, as they had, both town and county councillors. Whatever merit might have been in that point, going to a situation where we have the lowest levels of representation per capita in Europe is not progress. It is certainly not reform. Town councils were an imperfect being. They needed change. They needed more power. They did not need to be done away with. The ‘reforms’ were, rather hilariously, called ‘Putting People First’. It was anything but.