Abolish the councils

LOCAL GOVERNMENT: the place where we see real democracy in action, where decisions are taken that affect our daily lives and we can all have our say. Far from the lofty halls of the Oireachtas, local councils may lack grandeur but they are vital institutions of democracy. Right?

Not in Ireland, where councils are seemingly incapable of doing anything other than consuming money and failing to deliver universal services.

The revelation that vast amounts of water are being lost through leaky pipes – as much as 60 per cent in some council areas – will not come as a shock to anyone who has moved to Ireland from abroad only to discover that they must pay for their bins to be emptied despite the fact that council activities are already funded out of general taxation.

Residential rates payments were abolished in Ireland in a populist and short-term gesture but the money is simply collected through income tax instead. Reinstating residential rates would be political suicide and so no party will propose it and councils are champing at the bit to introduce service charges. The precedent has been set with the bizarre and onerous waste disposal service and water is next.

Dublin City Council has already been attempting to get us used to the idea of paying for water. In a disastrous PR move, the council put a banner on the Liffey Quays informing us that ‘water was precious’ and needs to be conserved.

It was submerged when water levels rose.

Never mind, though. A bit of environmental guilt and smugness will get the middle class on board – and no-one really cares what the lower orders think anyway.

The latest wheeze, across Dún Laoghaire in particular, has been the sealing of drains, resulting in run-off pooling in small roadside floods at all times of year.

It comes as no surprise, then, that recent shortages of drinking water are being blamed on people leaving their taps running in order to stop pipes freezing. This blatant lie is being used because it shifts the blame from Ireland’s incompetent bureaucracies onto individuals.

Why are we sleepwalking into charging for – and metering – water in a country that ‘enjoys’ rainfall between 150 and 225 days a year and is home to Europe’s largest freshwater lake? Technically it’s in the North, but I’m sure they’d share it with us if, as the Green Party seems to think, our wet nation is undergoing a process of desertification. Is it actually acceptable that a rich first world country like Ireland is raising the spectre of ‘water poverty’? There is a (vanishingly small) price to pay for the processing of water but it should be paid in taxation – that is the price of living in a civilised country.

Why not just modernise Ireland’s creaky water infrastructure? This will be costly, but it needs to be done. And it is precisely what councils are supposed to do.

Given that the local authorities have failed to do this (or much of anything else to improve people’s lives) perhaps it is time we took radical action. Of course, being Ireland ‘radical’ doesn’t really mean radical, but here is a simple suggestion: let’s get rid of the majority of these councils.

The Dublin area is home to four councils: Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. This needless duplication of services would be tolerable if it was done in the name of meaningful democracy, but it’s not. Every time a decision is made that anyone actually notices, councillors blame it on the city or county manager and say they have no power to do anything about it.

There is a model which the Republic could adopt – and it’s from very close to home. Plans have been made in the North, now seemingly stalled, to replace countless gerrymandered boroughs with a total of seven so-called ‘supercouncils’. Replicating this eminently sensible plan would not only save money – the ne plus ultra of all Irish political considerations – it would also spare us the NIMBYism and petty graft that local politicians specialise in.

Then we can get to work getting rid of a few TDs too…