Nenagh county councillor describes local government as 'useless and toothless'

Local government remains "toothless and useless" at the same time as taxpayers are expected to come up with an extra €2.5m to fund the new 14 TDs proposed under the changes to Dáil constituencies, according to Tipperary county councillor Seamus Morris.

And, along with expensive mayoral election in our major cities, he said that you would think that all is well in politics.

"It certainly isn’t. The elephant in the room is the centralised structure of power and money in this State. We have seen much needed efforts to incentivise more women into politics while omitting to see that most parties are having trouble enticing non-teaching PAYE workers into local government due to the lack of evening meetings and the move away from public meetings to useless workshops," said the Nenagh councillor.

Cllr Morris said that the Fine Gael and Labour Government of 2011-2016 just about destroyed local government when they foisted the “Putting People First” programme on the country, which was supposed to be an action programme for effective local government.

At the same time, then Ministers Phil Hogan and Alan Kelly helped set up Irish Water which was to take away all water and wastewater services from local government.

"We see to our detriment how that has worked out, with Irish Water being an unmitigated disaster and complete waste of money," he said.

The Independent councillor said that local government had now seen the power massively shift to unelected CEOs.

"Not only has the loss of town and borough councils seen a huge loss of money being spent in our towns directly managed by town and borough councillors, but power has also shifted to the new tsars of local government spending - the consultant - with directors of services deferring almost all projects from simple road projects to removing reeds from lakes to the new gods," he said.

Cllr Morris revealed that a recent FOI he put to Tipperary County council showed that the council spent over €11m on consultants on capital projects from 2019 to 2022, including over €380,000 on architects’ fees on 36 local authority homes in the Nenagh District, despite the county having its own full time architect.

"Ireland is a complete laggard in terms of the centralised system which stymies local government, with only 8% of public spending going through local government; in Denmark, 65% of public spending is spent through local government," he pointed out.

Cllr Morris said that a debate was needed on how local government was run and funded before the next local elections in June 2024. Otherwise, we would have failed to address the “elephant in the room” - or else we can continue to have councillors wait for a few scraps to fall from the CEO's desk as happens now.