Nearly everyone knows about Alfie Byrne. As Lord Mayor of Dublin throughout the 1930s, having been re-elected a record eight times, he was almost the embodiment of the city.

And however slight his form, he became an effective spokesman for the Plain People of Dublin, as Myles na Gopaleen would have put it.

Alfie Byrne wore the Lord Mayor's chain of office, famously given to the city by King William III, with great distinction in what, admittedly, were simpler times.

He had his last hurrah in the mid-1950s and, with few exceptions since then, the gold chain has become a mere bauble to be passed around from Billy to Jack.

The Lord Mayor takes precedence over the Taoiseach on formal civic occasions, but has no power.

Though the perks are good (an allowance of £24,000 a year, the right to live in the Mansion House and a chauffeur-driven Volvo with a 98-D-1 registration), the role is largely ceremonial; power resides with the city manager.

The City Council, like all local authorities, provides a democratic veneer for what is essentially a bureaucratic organisation, however well run.

The Lord Mayor presides at its meetings and fulfils numerous other functions, while the city manager, John Fitzgerald, gets on with the daily business of managing the capital.

As the late John Kelly TD said, in one of his characteristically witty remarks: "It beats me why grown men and women would seek to be elected to Dublin Corporation to go around in robes and tricorn hats and on occasion, in the case of the Lord Mayor, to travel in a gilded coach like the Ugly Sisters on the way to the ball."

But this is about to change, according to Noel Dempsey, the Minister for the Environment and Local Government. On Monday, he said he intended to address the "democratic deficit" in local authorities by having mayors and council chairs elected directly by the people for a three- to five-year term of office.

It is, of course, completely coincidental that Mr Dempsey made his proposal within weeks of the British government's announcement that London is to get a directly-elected mayor, with a citywide council. This will re-establish the Greater London Council abolished with such relish by Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s.

London was left rudderless: there was no one to speak for it, which is what Thatcher intended. But soon it will once again have an effective spokesman - perhaps even Ken Livingstone, the leftwing Labour MP who signed the GLC's death warrant merely by putting it on the political map. (Other spoken-of candidates include Lord Archer, the pulp novelist and former Tory chairman, and Glenda Jackson, the former actress and current Labour minister.)

All major cities need someone to speak for them - and to get things done. London is a world capital, competing with New York, Tokyo and other cities of equivalent status. But even within the lesser tier which includes Dublin, there is intense competition for inward investment, tourism and other economic benefits.

As the British architect, Richard Rogers, noted more than a decade ago, what we are witnessing - certainly in Europe - is a return to the Renaissance-era competition between the Italian city regions, a contest in which Florence sought to outdo Milan and Milan, in turn, did its damndest to outshine Venice and Genoa.

No one understood this better than Pasqual Maragall, the former Mayor of Barcelona. First elected in 1982 - by the City Council - he served as Mayor until 1997 and, during his long period in office, Barcelona was transformed into the astonishing city it is today, an achievement crowned by the 1994 Olympic Games.

Maragall is a Catalan socialist and would be unlikely to have much in common politically with Rudolph Giuiliani, the right-wing Republican Mayor of New York. But Giuiliani, too, has been making a major impact and his effective stewardship, particularly on the crime front, helped him to romp home in last November's mayoral election.

By contrast, few enough Dubliners could probably name the city's current Lord Mayor (John Stafford TD), even though he's been doing a decent job. Barely more than a handful could say with certainty who held the office last year or the year before that; they change so often that the citizens have every right to be confused.

Mr Stafford, who identified the rejuvenation of O'Connell Street as his priority, regrets he will not be there to see through the brilliant plan produced by a corporation team headed by Dick Gleeson, deputy chief planning officer. By the time it's all done, two more Lord Mayors will have come and gone.

This turnstile approach does the city no good. That it is followed in city and county councils throughout the Republic does them no good either. Noel Dempsey appears to recognise this and it will be interesting to see what proposals he will make to change the present situation by introducing an element of democratic accountability.

One of the advantages of a directly-elected Lord Mayor is that the candidates would have to put forward a platform. As Prof Frank Convery, director of the UCD Environmental Institute, has said, such a mayor would provide "a focal point for serious policy-making and decision-taking at the political level".

If the duly-elected Lord Mayor did not perform, he or she could be turfed out at the next election and replaced by someone offering a better platform. But to implement any set of policies, the Lord Mayor needs to have more power - and this would mean rebalancing the role and functions with those of the city manager.

There is, however, a residual fear that central government prefers a powerless system of "revolving mayors" to having someone in Dublin who would provide a rival power centre in the city. Mrs Thatcher, too, was irritated by the actions of Ken Livingstone in the London County Hall, just across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster - home to the Commons and Lords.

Another complicating factor has been the 1994 break-up of local government in Dublin into four administrative units, each independent from the other, with a largely powerless - though well-intentioned - regional authority attempting to provide some co-ordination in the "metropolitan interest".

As for the likely candidates, who can say at this early stage? But they are bound to include the likes of Fianna Fail's Eoin Ryan TD, still smarting at being left on the Government backbenches; Tony Gregory TD, the respected Independent; John Gormley TD, of the Greens; Gay Mitchell TD, of Fine Gael and Tommy Broughan TD (Labour).

Any such contest would finally give Dubliners a choice about who should wear King Billy's chain.