When you begin to think about how badly Irish regions, counties and towns are governed, it’s difficult to think about anything else.
After my last column, which considered the draft Westport Local Area Plan (WLAP), two things happened that directed my attention back to local governance.
Firstly, Chris MacManus, Sinn Féin MEP for Midlands-North-West, organised an open meeting in Tubbercurry last week to provide an update on the European Parliament’s (EP’s) work on addressing regional imbalances in Ireland – specifically the lagging nature of the economy of the North and West region – and to give an opportunity for people to discuss this issue.
Since the EP takes EU regional policy very seriously (indeed far more seriously than our national politicians), I decided to brave the N17 and make the trip to Tubbercurry.
Two words capture the tone of the Tubbercurry meeting: frustration and anger.
The audience was drawn from a wide range of people from Sligo and Mayo, many of whom were very active in social, business and agricultural affairs. These weren’t passive whiners and complainers. They were movers and doers. But the dysfunctional way that county and town governance is conducted, as seen through their eyes, was truly depressing.
Local issues and problems abound in the North and West region and tend to be addressed piecemeal and in isolation, if at all.
Silos
A major obstacle to dealing with local issues arises from the top-down way that governance is organised in Ireland. Government departments, national agencies and public utilities function strategically in silos, apply national rules that often disregard local circumstances, and do little joined-up thinking, talking to each other or talking to the people. Local governments, even in adjoining counties, are weak, underfunded and uncoordinated.
Examples? We heard in Tubbercurry from a person who had built a new house and was told that a fibre connection could not be available for ‘a few years’, but interim copper-wired connections were no longer being installed. Result? No phone line. No broadband.
We heard that rather than suffer the hassle of taking the bus from Sligo, some Sligo residents with disabilities who need to travel to Galway for hospital appointments prefer to take the train to Dublin Connolly, change stations, and take the Galway train from Dublin Heuston.
The unwillingness of the Department of Transport to reopen the Collooney-Claremorris-Athenry-Galway line for passenger traffic was a sore point at the meeting. In the recent All Island Strategic Rail Review, the Sligo-Collooney-Claremorris rail track was never mentioned. It had vanished, either accidentally due to casual inattention by the consultants, Arup, or deliberately due to government negativity. We shall probably never know.
Councillors’ exclusion
The second reason the topic of local governance drew my attention again was something I read in the Connaught Telegraph on Tuesday, November 14. It said that the four Westport-based county councillors within the Westport-Belmullet Municipal District were calling for the draft WLAP to be cancelled and redone because they had been excluded from the initial internal discussion and design stages of the process.
The Mayo County Council (CC) Executive claims to hold sole responsibility for formulating the WLAP, an activity from which the elected councillors are excluded. The draft plan then goes out for public consultation and can be modified by the MCC Executive to take account of public submissions. Then, and only then, do the elected councillors enter the planning process – but to what purpose remains unclear at such a late stage.
This debacle raises many basic questions. Work on drafting the WLAP must have been ongoing internally within MCC for some years. In the absence of input by the elected councillors, what efforts were made by the MCC Executive initially to seek inputs from people who would be knowledgeable about local strategic needs and would be affected by the plan?
Action needed
I am also puzzled that the Westport councillors waited until the draft was completed and public consultation was almost over before signalling publicly their displeasure at their exclusion. Knowing that they were excluded from the early WLAP design stage, it is regrettable that the councillors didn’t take any pre-emptive action to establish the legality of their exclusion until it was too late. Did the four Westport councillors consider submitting joint written observations to the draft WLAP during the public-consultation process, even if it would be a poor substitute for proper prior involvement and consultation?
When faced with a dysfunctional system of local governance one can complain and hope that one will be heard. But in our governance system, the centre decides whose complaint will be addressed and who will be ignored. Calling for action by others – often the preferred approach of local TDs and councillors alike – simply passes the buck and is seldom effective.
However, If the centre will not engage in a proper dialogue with local elected representatives, they need to act.
County councillors are not without options and agency. If they are being ignored by the centre, they can use their status to help articulate solutions and start holding the centre to account. Calling for the WLAP to be abandoned and redone is misguided and will solve nothing.
John Bradley is a former ESRI professor and has published on the island economy of Ireland, EU development policy, industrial strategy and economic modelling.
OPINION: Regional imbalances spark frustration and anger
14
23
01.12.2023
When you begin to think about how badly Irish regions, counties and towns are governed, it’s difficult to think about anything else.
After my last column, which considered the draft Westport Local Area Plan (WLAP), two things happened that directed my attention back to local governance.
Firstly, Chris MacManus, Sinn Féin MEP for Midlands-North-West, organised an open meeting in Tubbercurry last week to provide an update on the European Parliament’s (EP’s) work on addressing regional imbalances in Ireland – specifically the lagging nature of the economy of the North and West region – and to give an opportunity for people to discuss this issue.
Since the EP takes EU regional policy very seriously (indeed far more seriously than our national politicians), I decided to brave the N17 and make the trip to Tubbercurry.
Two words capture the tone of the Tubbercurry meeting: frustration and anger.
The audience was drawn from a wide range of people from Sligo and Mayo, many of whom were very active in social, business and agricultural affairs. These weren’t passive whiners and complainers. They were movers and doers. But the dysfunctional way that county and town governance is conducted, as seen through their eyes, was truly depressing.
Local issues and problems abound in the North and West region and tend to be addressed piecemeal and in isolation, if at........
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