Directly elected mayors
Senator McGahon said every county and local authority should have a directly elected mayor and argued that referendums are not the best way to decide the issue. The Chair warned him he was drifting into the later Limerick mayor debate.
That was excellent timing. I thank the Cathaoirleach for letting me in at the very last minute.
I do not want to anticipate what I hope to say later in the Second Stage debate on the Limerick mayor. It is very specific to Limerick, however. Therefore, I just want to talk about local government in general and the concept of mayors. First, they are a very good idea. Second, every county in Ireland and every local authority should have a directly elected mayor. That is a very good thing because where there are directly elected mayors in each local authority, they are elected for a five-year term with a very specific mandate whereby they have to go out and actually try to deliver that.
Did someone else raise this issue before me?
Comment on this
The debate later today is specifically about Limerick. While I will chat about that, that is Limerick based. What I would actually like a debate about is the concept of directly elected mayors for every local authority. The idea of having to have referendums for them does not necessarily work because as we see with referendums, and as we may see with the referendums coming in March, people are mainly voting on them based on different reasons and not the actual substantive issues. Therefore, I do not think referendums are the way to go when it comes to directly elected mayors either. However, my thinking behind this is because chief executives and executives of local councils have ultimate power. They are not held accountable to anybody. They can make decisions as they wish. They are not accountable to the Oireachtas. In theory, they are accountable to county councillors. However, county councillors are not going to make life difficult for themselves by challenging the executive because then the executive could turn around and blackball them. I would really appreciate a debate about directly elected mayors, not just for Limerick, Waterford or Dublin but for every local authority. That is the future of local government in this country. A debate around that at some stage in the next few months would be timely enough.