FG says Dublin mayor's office to be 'toothless quango'

THE PROPOSALS for a directly-elected Dublin mayor would lead to the creation of “another toothless quango”, Fine Gael environment spokesman Phil Hogan claimed.

Mr Hogan, who was speaking on the Order of Business, later pursued the matter with Minister for the Environment John Gormley at question time. He said that whoever was elected would be no more than “the glorified chairperson of a city development board”.

He added: “In principle, Fine Gael has no problem whatsoever with the directly-elected mayor of Dublin.

“But 2114 is the appropriate time to have that, because we want to devolve functions from central government to local government and the councillors initially.”

Mr Gormley insisted the proposal would lead to “efficiency, innovation and drive” for the city. “It has been called for over many years. Nobody has delivered on it, but I intend to deliver on it in government,” he added.

Mr Gormley said the mayor’s power to direct would allow the holder of the office to influence the €1.3 billion annual budget. He added he had no doubt that people in Fine Gael would be “gagging” for the job.

Meanwhile, Labour’s Joanna Tuffy said that senators should be allowed to also sit on local authorities. Ms Tuffy suggested that the dual mandate, whereby members of the Oireachtas could also sit on local authorities, should not have been abolished for senators.

“If you look at the German upper house, there are councillors or their equivalent,’’ she added.

“If we want to revamp the Seanad, maybe we should allow senators to be councillors,” She said that there should be a link between the Seanad and local government.

Mr Gormley said it would be interesting to get an assessment of the impact of abolishing the dual mandate.

“There are many who would argue that we got rid of a lot of experienced heads in the local councils who were able to deal with the managers and did have an idea of where the local authorities should move and took more of a national perspective as well,” he added. “There are arguments pro and con.”