TOP LOCAL authority officials would be offered redundancy and scores of local bodies abolished if Fine Gael’s local government reforms were implemented.
Local services will have to be cut back in coming years to cope with falling budgets, Fine Gael TD Phil Hogan said as he launched the party’s Power To The People document yesterday.
It recommends major reforms for local authorities, including the merger or abolition of 95 bodies, saving €70 million a year.
In particular, it says councils should take over community employment schemes run by Fás, which should be left to deal with large-scale training.
It recommends that local enterprise boards be scrapped and amalgamated into a one-stop shop to boost the creation of new businesses. Commercial rates should be frozen for five years, but Fine Gael has held off on saying whether local taxes should be introduced, pending the Commission on Taxation’s report due in June.
Councils should take over control of providing affordable homes, and they should cut the price of the ones they have in stock, the party said.
An Bord Pleanála should be required by law to deal with applications in 18 weeks, while the life of existing planning permissions should be extended from five to seven years, it continued.
Mr Hogan said Fine Gael supported the election of a directly-elected mayor in Dublin from 2014 onwards, but only if the job carried real powers and the relationship with the city manager was clarified.
“I don’t want to support something that becomes another layer of bureaucracy at local level,” said Mr Hogan, his party’s environment spokesman.
Minister for the Environment and Local Government John Gormley plans to introduce a directly-elected mayor from 2011, but Mr Hogan said this made no sense as it would be halfway into a term of office and would not attract voter support.
Dealing with existing council bureaucracy, the Carlow/Kilkenny TD said unnecessary “layers” had been added during recent, more plentiful years. “Now, we have to cut our cloth to meet the measures. There is a top-level management structure – with directors of services – that is not appropriate for the present times,” he said.
Such top-ranking officials should be offered the redundancy for over-50s public servants in the recent Budget by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan.
Lower-ranking staff left without jobs to do after the Fine Gael reform plan was introduced should be made redundant, in addition to those already being left go by councils, he said.
People living in towns with urban district councils should not also have votes in county council elections, Mr Hogan told a press conference.