Strategic plan to enhance Dublin unveiled

DUBLIN Corporation has produced its first-ever "mission statement", pledging that its staff will become "ambassadors for Dublin city in all their contacts with the public".

The corporation's 24-page strategic management plan - spearheaded by the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald - is aimed at ensuring that its resources "will be used efficiently, effectively and in an innovative manner for the betterment of the city and its people".

Designed to "motivate and inspire the corporation to face the new century with confidence", the plan pledges co-operation with the business and community sectors to foster the development of "a vibrant, attractive, safe and environentally sustainable capital city".

The corporation will "actively pursue" high-quality environmental standards, promoting good civic design and conserving the character of Dublin's built and natural environment, as well as ensuring that the principle of sustainability is "an integral part of all our policies".

It pledges to implement the Dublin Bay Project to ensure high standards of sewage treatment and improve the quality of bathing water. It also promises an integrated waste management strategy, including minimisation, recycling and the promotion of a "litter-free culture".

The plan promises a coordinated scheme of environmental improvements along major routes into the city, continued enforcement of the Derelict Sites Act and the acceleration of action plans for "areas in need of rejuvenation and suffering from social exclusion".

The corporation says it will establish an economic development unit to spearhead its role as a "key facilitator" in promoting inward investment as well as using the planning process in a positive way to encourage physical, social and economic development.

It also pledges to deliver a "friendly, courteous and helpful" service to all its customers, with simplified procedures to deal with representations or complaints and enhanced access to "clear and easy-to-understand information in line with a policy of openness.

The first local authority to produce a strategic management plan was South Dublin County Council, where Mr Fitzgerald was county manager. Since he took overas city manager last June, staff have been put through a series of workshops aimed at changing the corporation's ethos.