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All politics is local
Read more about: Local Government 
The cold weather, in addition to matching the economic mood, as highlighted some structural issues in Irish local government — issues that have slipped down the agenda with all the focus on the budget and NAMA. A few things worth mentioning. The frequent word in government statements about the weather is “local” as in local authorities. It’s up to the county and city councils to sort out.
Yet this is despite a long-term trend of removing autonomy from local authorities — they lost their main revenue source (residential rates), and national bodies have sprouted as bigger players in what used to be their core areas (e.g. the NRA and an Bord Pleanala). And it doesn’t help to have TDs’ offices churning out “letters of representation” on things that that are council matters — no surprise that people don’t see the distinction between national and local quite so sharply.
The other issue is water. Apparently the water shortages are due to burst pipes and taps being left on to avoid freezing. That sounds like underinvestment in water infrastucture and lack of incentive to conserve due to absence of water charges. When we get out of the ice (or if, as it must seem now) hopefully the broader issues won’t be forgotten.
Local and national politics intertwine and always will. The abolition of the dual mandate was supposed to solve that but it is unrealistic. We live in local communities and multiple issues are effected by both the decisions of local and national issues. What local government in the world operates autonomously of national government? As for the work T.Ds do, in fact of late most of my queries are national issues to do with the financial struggles of my constituents in the economic climate we are in. T.D’s have never spent as much time in the Dail on multiple budgets and legislation and bank bailouts as we have in the past year. T.D’s need to see how these Government decisions hit locally and on their constituents because we are supposed to represent the people in the Dail not just vested interests like IBEC and the Banks.
The capacity of local government has been badly hit by 4000 staff being cut in local councils over the past year and local government funding having been slashed (and that includes both the funds it collects itself and the funds it receives from national government). Councils should have been better prepared but that cannot be easy when you are letting go hundreds of staff and you are trying to keep within a much straitened budget. That being said my council is out clearing paths manually in old people’s complexes and visiting the old people there to see if they are o.k. as part of its work in dealing with the snow.
The broader issue is we need to realise how important public services are and to fund and resource them accordingly, and stop playing to the agenda of those that would roll back public services, while the banks are bailed out to the hilt.
And unfortunately the Dept of Environment and Local Government does not take this expansive view of their role in improving local government. They seem to think that once the agreed financial allocations are made, their main job is done.
That being said my council is out clearing paths manually in old people’s complexes and visiting the old people there to see if they are o.k. as part of its work in dealing with the snow.
Surely checking up on old people is the responsibility of their younger neighbours?
What next, we’ll expect someone from the council to call round to knock the snow off our wellies?
Time, methinks, for people to man-up a bit and not expect to be baby-sat by the state.
There are no younger neighbours in such housing complexes for the elderly, unless you mean the 70 year olds calling around to those in their 80s and upwards?
Ghettoizing the elderly like that has got to be one of the least enlightened public policies in this country.
But surely these old peoples’ complexes exist within the context of a wider community? I mean, we’re not talking about massive holding camps hidden deep in the Bog of Allen, are ye?
So these old folks would generally have younger neighbours living within walking distance, they probably just don’t know them.
@Joanna,
Good to come across you online. Had to admire your media management last week on one the drive time radio slots, the producer asked (what I thought was an interesting question on question of public / private, big state / small state) as to how the private (toll) operators had no problem keeping roads gritted yet the councils seemed to struggle. Within seconds you were talking about your own estate and the specific problem with the junction of your estate and the main road! It would seem all politics are indeed local.
James, Who gritted the tolled roads???I saw somewhere that it was the NRA , was this done at taxpayer’s expense—I don’t know , just wondering. The gritting was minimal, just the left hand lane and not the passing lane.
James,
Thanks for the feed back.
Just had a look and am impressed by your website.
It was instinctive my shift to the local but you are right that is where it is at when it comes to politics.
Joanna
Joanna,
But you’re supposed to be the Labour Party spokesperson on the Environment, are you not? James’s immediate ambition is to become a local councillor, so if he was asked I’d expect him to go on about the entrance to his local estate because he’s not required to have a perspective on national questions. Same does not hold for you.
Veronica,
Tip O’Neill had it right when he said “All politics is local”. The people live their lives out locally and that is where policy whether it is the policy of local or national government is felt.
@Betty I don’t know the detail on the toll road gritting, I wasn’t on any toll roads myself over the period, although I was on the N7, M50 and M11 over Christmas and new year and they were all fine. I thought it raised some interesting questions though if the toll roads were being maintained to a higher standard and I was particularly interested to hear the Labour view (being of course, traditionally advocates of public ownership).
@Joanna Thanks for the reply. Glad you like my website. I believe we operate in bordering constituencies (Kildare North, Dublin Mid West) so a local issue could well introduce us one day. In fact I am sure I crossed the border a few times canvassing for the locals last June (up around Oughterard and Arclough and strayed once or twice into Newcastle).
I have heard it said if one is to keep one’s seat, one can be a great local operator and a great national operator or a great local operator. However it appears one cannot succeed, at least electorally, by being a great national operator alone. Arguably Alan Dukes and Michael McDowell would bear this out. Numerous backbenchers of all hues would bear out that one can be purely locally succesful whilst there are also examples of (probably the ideal situation) individuals having national and local renown. Look after the pennies and the pounds or just look after the pennies but looking after the pounds alone would not seem to cut it.
One of the (few) political upsides of my not being elected this time was that I became free once again to ponder on the wider questions of the day. My blogging had become excrutiatingly local as we approached polling day! It also became possible to guilt free attend events outside the constiuency once again – it really can be amazing the extent to which the local focus overshadows everything else in the heat of election battles.
Joanna,
I appreciate what you’re saying and that the best national representative is likely to be one who is rooted in his/her local community, knows what’s going on and how national policies impact on local lives, businesses and services. But that’s all beside the point of my direct question to you, which I don’t really expect you to answer. You are a politician after all! Best of luck for this coming year, by the way. It looks like it will be another tough one for all our politicians.
Thanks Veronica,
There will be plenty of material for Irish Election in that case.
To you and the other bloggers on this site, keep up the good work of initiating interesting political debates.
James, your point about the difficulties of sustaining a national and local viable political career is worth emphasis. In our closest relative political system i.e. UK, the big parties find a way to plant some national heavy hitters in safe seats and have an apparatus to support them in terms of local work to keep the seat that way. But this is not a model that gets used much in Ireland, notwithstanding the occasional parachuting in of a “big beast” from the world of media or sport. Perhaps there’s a an alternative model of the Senate where it gets used for better engagement from the more cerebal figures who don’t want to get involved in the nitty-gritty of a Dail campaign. But anyway the point is that our current system is not set up to generate a “government of all the talents”.
James,
No system would generate such a utopian and elitist concept.
Sorry P.
That should have been.
Good heavens Joanna! Surely you cannot be suggesting that elites are a bad thing? We have elites in all branches of academia, sport, medicine, science, business and just about every other area of human endeavour, even politics. By definition, elites are comprised of our greatest experts or champions of excellence in any particular area and naturally emerge within every society that functions to any degree of normality. Elitism becomes a dirty word only within political cultures where mediocrity is prized over meritocracy and attaining the highest standards of performance for the good of all. Now that I think of it, that probably accounts for the fact that we’re in such a mess!
@P’ONeill Yes I think this is an important point which is sometimes missed in the debate.
@Joanna I don’t know how you can say this would never happen when it clearly does right across the water and likely in many other jurisdictions the world over. It is still democratic as the people ultimately have the last veto.
All. I’m actually going to write a post on this as my further comments are looking very wordy! And I think it deserves a discussion in own right.
prop joe, are the state and community totally divorced from each other, they can never be the same thing? we as society agree to pay taxes so people will get looked after.
@P O’Neill: that’s possible in the UK because of FPTP, PR makes things too tight between the candidates to do safe seats for national heavy hitters who aren’t also local heavy hitters. We’d need to adjust our electoral system to explicitly allow for such candidates, e.g. by having a pool of non-constituency seats in the Dail or something similar such as making the Seanad a relevant body and having a fair proportion of its seats filled by national elections.