Sir, - I refer to Mr Brian Maye's letter (April 14th) lamenting the neglect of the centenary of the newspaper founded by William Rooney and Arthur Griffith. Could I suggest, a little in advance, another centenary taking place this month of an event which has had a powerful impact on Irish public life to the present day?
Next Thursday, April 22nd, will mark the centenary of the first meetings of Ireland's county councils. On that day 100 years ago county councils met in courthouses in each of the 33 local government counties of Ireland (counting in the two Tipperaries) to begin a new era in democratic local government.
The members of the councils had been elected earlier in April in elections which saw the franchise extended for the first time to people who owned a minimum of property. It also extended voting rights for the first time to women.
Prior to that local government had been in the hands of the Grand Juries - an elite body appointed by the crown's representatives in each county, and the Poor Law Guardians who had been set up to deal with the poverty of the years before the Famine. The guardians had proved effective in many ways but their membership was restricted to those who owned substantial property.
Such restrictions of wealth and gender were largely swept away by the Local Government Act of 1898 which paved the way for the first council meetings in April 1899. The transformation at the polls was remarkable: the electorate returned 774 Home Rule councillors and 265 Unionist members. This was an almost exact reversal of the position under the old Grand Juries.
At their first meetings on April 22nd many of the new county councils passed a motion which read: "That we affirm the right of the Irish Nation to a full-measure of self-government."
Accompanying such dramatic declarations of national ambition was the fact that the new councils introduced a whole new layer of Irish people to the disciplines of democracy. As well as being of benefit to their own counties, many of those elected at this and subsequent local government elections went on to form the core of membership of the first Dail Eireann and its successors - a relationship between local and national politics that is strong to the present day.
However, the greatest contribution of the new councils at the end of the 19th century was their application to the tasks of building and maintaining road, water and sanitary facilities; providing for the homeless and taking advantage of new powers to build public housing; and creating the genesis of technical education and agricultural instruction.
While the subsequent years were to bring many setbacks and much criticism of their actions, the county councils stuck to their unglamorous responsibilities of putting in place the services on which the social and economic well-being of communities in urban and rural settings depended.
The centenary of the county councils may have much less drama than the bi-centenary of 1798 which was so prominent in the public imagination this time last year. Yet in its own low-profile way the founding of the county councils 100 years ago is an event which deserves to be recalled. - Yours, etc., Liam Kenny,
Director, General Council of County Councils, Harold's Cross Road, Dublin 6W.