Local Authorities 'do not communicate with TDs'

Schuhart

My first reaction to the news that local authorities ‘do not communicate with TDs’ was ‘why should they’. Surely the point of the abolition of the dual mandate was to enable TDs to concentrate on national issues. Then you find there’s a cross party group arguing that TDs should have a right to be up to their necks in local authority matters, so they can distract us with a load of guff about planning issues come the next General Election.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche told a cross-party group of deputies yesterday that he is willing to explore the possibility of TDs and senators addressing local authority meetings. Mr Roche met TDs drawn from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour yesterday who say they have encountered huge difficulties when engaging with local authorities.

<snip>Speaking afterwards, Mr Ring, a TD for Mayo, said it had been a highly productive meeting and Mr Roche had been very receptive to their complaints. Outlining the reason for the meeting, Mr Ring said that TDs and senators were encountering huge difficulties in their dealing with local authorities.

<snip>Mr Roche told the group that he would instruct his officials to look into the matter and would come back with proposals within a short period.

oscarBravo

Why am I not remotely surprised to see Michael Ring at the forefront of this?

jd

oscarBravo wrote:

Why am I not remotely surprised to see Michael Ring at the forefront of this?

Snap

gandalf

This is exactly the problem with this country's TD's who are supposed to be dealing with National issues but waste too much time on Local Issues.

They should remove the whole personality cult from Irish politics and have people vote for the parties they want in power. Then people could vote for the policies they want and not for X because he was a good lad in getting St. Muckers a new changing room. The parties would be allocated seats as per their share of the vote and they could decide from a panel on how they fill them.

Cork

Some local authorities are better than others, but many communicate badly.

Local Authorities have made a dogs dinner of the electoral register.

Higher Education Grants should be centralised.

I believe planning needs to be centralised - the web based enquiry planning facility is a joke.

Local Authorities need to communicate more.

InFront

gandalf wrote:

They should remove the whole personality cult from Irish politics and have people vote for the parties they want in power. Then people could vote for the policies they want and not for X because he was a good lad in getting St. Muckers a new changing room. The parties would be allocated seats as per their share of the vote and they could decide from a panel on how they fill them.

I agree there is a problem of people voting for local characters and not for which party they want to represent them, but blinding the public from who the party will choose as their local representative is hardly the answer either.

What would become of independent TDs? Surely they have some value?

What if I am aligned to a local political party, say FF (Im not btw:) ) and even though Id like to see them in the next government, I dont want one of my local FFers (Tom Kitt) to represent me or my family, but I do want the other man, Seamus Breenen to represent me. Surely I should have some sort of decison over who represents me within the party, without needing to throw out the baby with the bathwater?

gandalf

Funny thing is they are both my local TD's as well and I would love to see them chucked out.

No I think removing the cult of personality totally from National Politics will do us good, get the parish pump so to speak out of national policy. It will mean that rather than be influenced by someones personality, good looks, amount of babies they kiss people will examine the policies of the parties that they are voting for. It also means that the politicians can concentrate on doing good for the country as a whole and not looking over their shoulders because of what x,y or z local pressure group think of the way they vote.

(It will piss off the brown envelope brigade as well as the TD's would have no interest or sway in local policies anymore)

spanner

whatever about the TDs but the local town concils have no say on what actions are taken by the county concils.
In my locality the concil wanted to build a footpath down on road but we said it would just be in the way there and that it would like them to build it on the ajancent road because people walk on that and it is dangerous for the traffic, the concil agreed themselves that both footpaths would cost the same, the county manager disagreed and even though our local town concil, our county concillor disgreed and told him that was not what the people wanted the county manager went ahead and did it the way he wanted to, why do we even bother voting local elections if this happens

SkepticOne

The theory is that TDs should represent local people on national legislative and policy issues. If a piece of national legislation is going to adversely affect a local area then the TD can pipe up about it. A party list system as suggested by Gandalf would solve the "parish pump" problem but undermine this important function.

I think the main problem is mult-seat constituencies. This forces sitting TDs to compete against one another in the same constituencies. TDs know that if they don't deal with a particular complaint (e.g. getting a bus stop moved) then the constituent will just move on to the next TD. Why bother writing to the council when you can have a TD lobbying on your behalf?

Have one TD per constituency. This would also have the advantage of drastically reducing the number of sitting TDs saving the tax-payer money.

SkepticOne

SkepticOne wrote:

The theory is that TDs should represent local people on national legislative and policy issues. If a piece of national legislation is going to adversely affect a local area then the TD can pipe up about it. A party list system as suggested by Gandalf would solve the "parish pump" problem but undermine this important function.

I think the main problem is mult-seat constituencies. This forces sitting TDs to compete against one another in the same constituencies. TDs know that if they don't deal with a particular complaint (e.g. getting a bus stop moved) then the constituent will just move on to the next TD. Why bother writing to the council when you can have a TD lobbying on your behalf?

Have one TD per constituency. This would also have the advantage of drastically reducing the number of sitting TDs saving the tax-payer money.

And create a two party system? No thanks.

Fianna Fail would likely never be out of power with a majoritarian system.

lostexpectation

SkepticOne wrote:

The theory is that TDs should represent local people on national legislative and policy issues. If a piece of national legislation is going to adversely affect a local area then the TD can pipe up about it. A party list system as suggested by Gandalf would solve the "parish pump" problem but undermine this important function.

I think the main problem is mult-seat constituencies. This forces sitting TDs to compete against one another in the same constituencies. TDs know that if they don't deal with a particular complaint (e.g. getting a bus stop moved) then the constituent will just move on to the next TD. Why bother writing to the council when you can have a TD lobbying on your behalf?

Have one TD per constituency. This would also have the advantage of drastically reducing the number of sitting TDs saving the tax-payer money.

shouldn't they pass the bus stop issue onto their parties local councillor? but then councilors are powerless

lostexpectation

lostexpectation wrote:

shouldn't they pass the bus stop issue onto their parties local councillor? but then councilors are powerless

Good point, with such weak local government, people are forced to go to their TDs to get local issues sorted out. More powerful local government (Ireland has among the weakest in Europe), would be probably quite effective at focusing TDs on national issues.

SkepticOne

Deleted User wrote:

And create a two party system? No thanks.

Fianna Fail would likely never be out of power with a majoritarian system.

Well there are PR systems that work with single seat constituencies that would produce much the same overall representation in the Dail which could be considered.

Having said that, I'm not convinced that PR in Ireland serves to provide real choice at the national level. What you tend to get is a dominant populist party doing deals with smaller parties to get into government. A weak one party system is what you end up with. Only when things become unsustainable does the dominant party step aside and leave the 'opposition' to deal with the mess.

But my point was really about parish pump politics dominating at the expense of national politics and local politics becoming marginalised.

lostexpectation wrote:

shouldn't they pass the bus stop issue onto their partiesc local councillor? but then councilors are powerless

My understanding is that the council ultimately makes the decision, but this decision is influenced by TDs competing for votes. People should be going direct to their councilors for these things leaving TDs to represent local people on national issues.

Sleepy

Just make the elections for TD's national tbh. You vote for the TD's you want to represent you nationally using PR, taking local districts almost completely out of the (official) equation.