Proposed local government reforms will hit democracy
The reforms, proposed by Minister Phil Hogan, would see key decision-making functions transfer from the boards of local community development companies (Leader local action groups and area-partnerships) to sub-committees of city and county councils, to be known as LCDCs (local and community development committees).
The creation of LCDCs is likely to lead to a duplication of functions, as it will represent another bureaucratic hoop through which community groups and entrepreneurs will have to jump in order to access the supports that are needed to grow and sustain vital community services and promote entrepreneurship.
Indeed, given the very pressing need to support job creation, the Government should actually be increasing the autonomy and innovative capacity of local development companies, rather than trying to co-ordinate them using a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Community and voluntary organisations have amassed considerable expertise over the past 25 years. They are now among the main providers of key local services and facilities in areas such as childcare, eldercare, rural transport, youth development, recreation, culture and environmental conservation and heritage.
Local people have joined forces to implement local solutions to local problems, and this burgeoning of community development has been made possible, to a large extent through the support provided by the local development companies, mainly through the LEADER Programme.
Such has been the success of LEADER in Ireland that the Irish model has been replicated across Europe. The European Court of Auditors highlighted the Irish model of LEADER as among the most effective in Europe, and successive OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development) evaluations have lauded Ireland’s Local Development Companies for being innovative. The European Commission has also advocated the merits of local development and is offering member states a 10% top up on some structural funds, where they promote community-led local development. Thus, if the proposed LCDCs are given management powers, Ireland looks set to miss out on this additional funding. The proposed local government reforms serve to weaken aspects of local democracy in Ireland. There is a strong consensus that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Throughout the current debate, community leaders have stressed that their support for local development companies does not imply that they are anti-local government. Indeed, the local development companies themselves have produced a set of policy proposals on ‘Stronger Local Government — Stronger Local Development,’ which was launched in June 2013. Moreover, several local authorities have passed motions and resolutions denouncing Minister Hogan’s reform proposals and advocating the continuation and strengthening of the current model of local development.
Ireland, along with Greece, is already one of the most centralised states in Europe. The proposed reforms would set us further down the costly and retrograde cul-de-sac that is centralisation.
lDr Brendan O’Keeffe is a lecturer in Geography at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.
