Parish-pump politics prevail despite FoI laws

PARISH-PUMP politics are still alive and well despite laws giving citizens greater access to public services and information with which councillors and TDs have traditionally helped them.

This view has emerged strongly from academic research among senior officials in town, city and county councils who are tasked with assessing requests under Freedom of Information (FoI) laws in effect since 1998.

More than half of the country’s 324 local authority FoI decision-makers took part in the survey by University College Cork law professor Maeve McDonagh. She found a strong perception among these officials (from departments such as housing, planning and environmental services) that the law has improved record-keeping because of the increased likelihood of documents being retrieved at a later date, as well as raising transparency and accountability.

An expected benefit of the FoI Acts was that members of the public could access information held by councils and other bodies which they might otherwise only have been able to get through their local councillor or TD. This level of clientelism by politicians, who undertake such duties to help maintain support from voters, was expected to diminish further when the dual mandate which allowed TDs and senators to keep council seats was abolished.

Prof McDonagh’s findings suggest there has been no clear move in that direction, with only one-third of decision-makers believing FoI law has led to more people seeking access to information for themselves rather than relying on councillors.

“Parish-pump politics is alive and well with the use of elected councilors, Dáil deputies and even Government ministers enquiring about the most trivial of issues on behalf of constituents,” wrote one official. Another suggested a generational gap in this area: younger people were more likely to use FoI than resort to councillors for help.

“Councillors are still used not only to press for information, but also to obtain a particular service,” said another survey response.

Prof McDonagh concludes, in an article about the research published in the Open Government journal, that although FoI would appear to have had some impact in promoting direct rather than mediated interaction between citizens and local authorities, patronage remains “the dominant paradigm” in the Irish system of local government.

“The apparent persistence of clientelism can be attributed to the fact that councillors are perceived not only as a conduit of information, but also as playing a role in securing services for their constituents. While providing access to information about entitlements can help in terms of clarifying the rules and policies governing such entitlements, addressing misconceptions about the role of councillors and their powers with regard to securing benefits for their constituents from local authorities is beyond the scope of FoI on its own,” she wrote.