In 2024, what does control of Mayo County Council actually mean?

News that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have formed an alliance on Mayo County Council for the first time can be classed as historic but certainly not a shock.

The long division between the two parties at national and local level was both a symptom of the Civil War and also of the reality that they were both big enough to aspire to lead governments with the other in opposition. Indeed, Fianna Fáil, for much of the 20th century, could lead a government on their own.

Politically, the duo were never as far apart as they liked to have people believe and when both their numbers started to fall, pragmatism came before pride. It is telling of how much the Irish political landscape has changed over the decades that now Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined cannot command a majority in the Dáil, requiring the Greens to make a slender majority.

Up until this year, the battle for control of Mayo County Council has seen either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil trying to muster enough seats to either have a majority in their own right or to broker a deal with Independents. In 2014, the decision of Cllr Séamus Weir, who had left Fine Gael months earlier over the Eirgrid controversy, to abstain paved the way for a working majority of ten Fianna Fáil councillors and five Independents. Now the two old rivals have come together with only Fianna Fáil’s Cllr Blackie Gavin in Castlebar a dissenting voice.

But what does control of Mayo County Council actually mean? Not a lot. With the eroding of the authority of elected councillors across decades, the battle for control of Mayo County Council has the feel of two bald men fighting over a comb.

For councillors individually it can lead to the considerable honour of being Cathaoirleach of the council, Mayo’s first citizen. For others, it may pave the way for a well-remunerated chair of one of the council’s six Strategic Policy Committees. The fee received for this role is €6,000 on top of your salary and expenses.

But did any candidate in the local elections campaign on the basis of what their party or grouping would do if they got control of Mayo County Council? I certainly did not see any.

Did any voter decide who to endorse based on who they wanted to control Mayo County Council? Highly doubtful.

Contrast that with national elections where people are genuinely invested in who they want to put into government. At local level the vote is much more likely to be for an individual and, almost always, an individual in their backyard.

There was a time in the history of this state when roads, housing, health, water and education were all invested in the local authorities but we now have the most emasculated system of local government in Europe.

Ireland’s local government is the weakest, most underfunded system of local government across the continent.

Consider then how centralised everything is in Ireland towards Dublin, in terms of power and authority and also economic wellbeing, and it is little wonder that we live in one of the most underdeveloped regions in Europe.

Ireland’s North-West region, which consists of Connacht and the three Ulster counties in the Republic of Ireland, was downgraded by the European Commission to a ‘lagging’ region in 2022 and is ranked 218th out of 234 regions across the EU in terms of infrastructural development.

Ireland has always had a highly centralised system of governance towards Dublin. It feels as if that had accelerated over the decades.

As Paul Gillespie pointed out in The Irish Times earlier this year, councillors in Ireland are spread much thiner than their European counterparts. Councillors elected to local government last month will represent 5,196 citizens per councillor, compared to 600 in Belgium, 620 in Spain and 412 in Finland.

The abolition of the town councils by the Fine Gael-led government in 2014 has further exacerbated these figures. However, the town councils had a very small budget so they were far from a panacea either. The chasm between us and Europe was well established by then.

The budget and finance the councillors can control is minuscule by European norms. Councillors have access to only three per cent of overall Irish tax revenue raised at local level, compared to an average of 15 per cent elsewhere in Europe. The overall tax revenue spent at local level is eight per cent compared to an EU average of 23 per cent.

Executive control of local matters, over elected councillors, has accelerated in recent decades. Various corruption scandals, which did untold damage to politics, has facilitated a considerable shift in the power base from elected politicians to civil servants at local and national level.

Dr Theresa Reidy, a lecturer on Irish politics at University College Cork (UCC), describes the continuous erosion of local government across the decades as ‘a deep hollowing-out of the role of local government’.

Though not a remit of local government, policing has been greatly centralised in recent years also, with Mayo’s garda region now part of a division that includes Roscommon and Longford. The closure of many rural garda stations and centralising of members of An Garda Siochána into larger towns has also had a corrosive effect at local level.

There have been improvements along the way. While the 2014 ‘reforms’ brought in by then Minister for Environment and Local Government Phil Hogan abolished the town councils, thereby greatly reducing the number of local councillors in the country, the establishment of municipal districts did give a better county council structure at local level than the electoral areas which preceded them.

Local authorities now have an enhanced role in local economic development and community development. There is much more that can be done but it does represent an improvement.

However, while we do have regional assemblies which can provide a framework for enhanced local government and decision-making in their regions, the reality is that they are not nearly visible or powerful enough.

Nobody is directly elected to them. Rather, the various constituent local authorities appoint councillors to sit on their board. Having covered Mayo County Council meetings for years, this is a very disjointed approach. Mayo County Council rarely discuss the Northern and Western Regional Assembly and councillors appointed to that authority rarely report back at meetings.

The Council of Europe are putting repeated pressure on Ireland to decentralise its government more and to enhance the power and responsibilities of local authorities and its councillors therein. This can only be a good thing. We need radical change and here on the West coast, in our lagging region, we need it more than most.

Perhaps the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael-controlled council can articulate that to their party colleagues in government at a national level.