New city manager has big plans for Dublin

SOCIAL deprivation in large areas of Dublin constitutes a "real threat" to its development as a European capital city and must be tackled sooner rather than later, according to the new Dublin city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald.

In his first media interview since taking office on June 17th, he also reaffirmed Dublin Corporation's support for LUAS, indicated that he wanted to work closely with "all the key players" in the city and expressed his hope that a new method would be found for funding local government.

Mr Fitzgerald, formerly county manager in South Dublin, has already carried out major changes in the corporation's management, switching the three assistant city managers and all of its principal officers to new departments on his first day in office. He has also been meeting members of staff and city councillors to explain his thinking.

"It's more than just a reshuffle of faces. For example, refuse collection and disposal now comes under the same assistant city manager as all the engineering services, because we have to bear in mind that Kill (the planned landfill site in Co Kildare) is a £20 million engineering project and we also have to start thinking about what happens post-Kill.

"At one time, it was just a question of tipping the stuff into the nearest hole in the ground. Now it's going to cost five times more. The expansion of the Ringsend sewage treatment plant will also involve an operating cost nine or 10 times what it is now. And my concern is that if nothing else happens the burden will fall on the commercial ratepayers.

In the end, it's a political decision about who should pay. The Minister has published a report and there is a view out there now, which 11 would share - and hope I'm not wrong - that this time there is a serious attempt to tackle the funding problem once and for all, because it's long overdue and we can't have local democracy without it."

Mr Fitzgerald said it was regrettable that local authorities in Ireland did not have as broad a range of responsibilities as their European counterparts, in terms of health, education and policing. "The next best thing is to work as closely as possible together, because there's a need for a multi-agency approach to many of the city's problems."

He is particularly concerned about social problems in local authority housing estates.

"Dealing with these problems is not an option; it's something that has to be done - by involving ourselves more with local community groups, but also by continuing the tough line approach with the small percentage of tenants who make life hell for everyone else."

These parts of Dublin - both in the inner city and on the periphery - had been "stubbornly excluded from the present economic boom", which he sees continuing for another three years, "and if we can't do something about them now, in the next two or three years, what hope in hell have we got when the inevitable downturn comes around?"

Mr Fitzgerald accepts that the corporation has no rem it for policing.

"But I do believe that if we end up in five or seven years time with the perfect European city, whatever that might be, surrounded by large areas of social deprivation, this would constitute a real threat to it. And that's not going to represent success, by any means.

"From my point of view, we have to be deeply involved and concerned about getting a solution to that problem. We play some part in it in terms of the management of our own estates, with more tenant involvement, but the health board and the police also play their part and they are doing that. I just hope we'll be able to get our act together."

The new manager said his philosophy was "like what Konrad Adenauer said about synergy, that two plus two can equal five". And while he was "acutely conscious of the power and resources of the corporation", he was "also aware that we can't solve all the problems on our own". It needed co-operation from everyone involved.

For the first time in its history, the corporation has a management team, consisting of the city manager, the three assistant managers, the finance officer, the personnel officer, the city architect, the planning officer and the city engineer. They meet once a week to "hammer out a corporate consensus

According to Mr Fitzgerald, it is "a very powerful team; as a group they've got the ability to make things happen". He prefers not to be the arbiter of last resort, "but if I have to be, I will be".

He is also anxious to involve the corporation's entire staff of 6,500 and wants to set up a training programme, which will include bus tours of problem areas.

He sees the corporation's planning and development department playing a "key role" in terms of how the city develops. "I regard planning as a service to ensure that we get the right quality of development," he said, adding that he also wants the corporation to become more "pro-active" in promoting Dublin as a European city.

This would "go beyond hanging out flags and bunting" and needed to involve organisations like the Chamber of Commerce, the City Centre Business Association and Dublin Tourism. "I have a horror of formal structures which tend to take on a life of their own, but I see no reason at all why we can't work together in a sort of loose coalition."

When asked about the persistence of dereliction even after a decade of urban renewal, Mr Fitzgerald said he would not rule out acquiring key sites for development. He also said the HARP plan for the Smithfield area was a good model for local plans embracing the entire city", instead of relying on the "far too inflexible" statutory Dublin City Plan.

Mr Fitzgerald described, CIE's light rail project as very important and said one of his main concerns was to ensure that disruption was kept to a minimum "when the job gets under way". Doing nothing to improve public transport meant that Dublin would grind to a halt and become "an unmanageable city, which is not an option".

Though nobody was advocating that cars should be banned from the city centre, the traffic had to be managed. Apart from better public transport, he said cycleways would have to be "taken much more seriously because they have a major contribution to make" - something which, he admitted, was barely recognised five years ago.

Mr Fitzgerald said the corporation was committed to implementing the entire DTI strategy, including light rail and the port tunnel.

Though he can understand the concerns of Marino residents about having the port tunnel bored underneath their homes, he says he is not worried about the controversial New Austrian Tunnelling Method. "I know they have fears about it, but I would be very surprised if the consultants we have would build something that's unsafe."

He insists that there is now a real consensus on the broad strategic issues facing the city, and "it's only when you get down to the micro level that there are problems". His task, he says, is to identify the "macro issues and deliver on them" and he is confident that the corporation can do this with the right structures in place

He made it clear that his responsibilities do not stop at the city boundary. "Working for the city is a regional job and that must include the outer edges," he said, adding that he had "an excellent working relationship" with the Fingal, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and South Dublin managers, which he hopes to extend at councillor level.

He also wants to reinforce the City Council's role as a policymaking body, which he believes has become subservient to councillors making representations on behalf of their constituents. So he has suggested an informal meeting, probably in September, with an agenda which would consist of nothing more than a blank sheet of paper.

Mr Fitzgerald sees the new civic offices at Wood Quay as a symbol of change. "I go home every night and I thank the Lord that I don't have to go through the process of building offices again, because I can just come in and get on with the job," he said, paying tribute to Mr Derek Brady, who oversaw its construction, on a "brilliant achievement".