'League table' of councils planned

The Minister for the Environment has warned poorly performing local authorities that he will "name and shame" them from next year.

Mr Roche, who announced his plans at the Local Authority Members Association (LAMA) winter conference in Dundalk yesterday, said his Department would compile league tables of local-authority performance in a range of areas from housing provision to water services, road maintenance and running of public libraries.

In all 42 performance indicators had been identified by the former minister for the environment, Mr Cullen, who said local authorities would be allowed to measure their own performance.

However, Mr Roche said he would be having that information independently verified and published, allowing league tables to be compiled.

"It will be possible to identify exactly how each authority is performing [ and] people will be able to see exactly what the taxpayers' investment in local government is delivering," he said.

Mr Roche said he was not engaging in an elaborate bureaucratic exercise for the sake of it and diverting local authority officials away from essential work.

Where problems were identified in the provision of services such as housing the process would allow the Department and the local authority to identify solutions and improve performance.

Last year a number of local authorities across the State did not spend their full housing, roads or water services allocations from the Department. A similar position is expected to emerge this year. The league tables proposed by the Minister would identify these councils.

The Minister said that local authority members frequently had their ambition blunted by authority management in a "blizzard of ill-focused information, by rules that seem to spring up like weeds,and he was aware that local authority members' powers had been gradually eroded over the past few decades.

The erosion of powers was also a point made by the Minister for Justice, who addressed the conference yesterday. Announcing that he intended to amend the Policing Bill, 2004, Mr McDowell said he wanted to broaden the input local authority members would have into such boards.