Sir, - Denis Coghlan in his article "Ball Back in Court of the Commission on Devolution" (August 19th) was very generous in his comments of their work. While this report had several aspirations, it only made one concrete recommendation - to hive off housing grants to local authorities. This confirms the State's obsession with centralised institutions which isolate services from people.
Ireland has one of the most centralised systems of government in Europe. Services such as policing, health, education and provision of welfare services, which are commonly allocated to local authorities in other European countries, are all controlled here through central government.
A recent Danish report on local government stated that the present Irish structure of local government is largely a legacy of 19th century British administration." Over the past 20 years, while most other member states were devolving their local services. Ireland embarked on a programme of what was called decentralisation of government departments. This did not address the issue of delivery of service to the citizen.
If the Devolution Commission continues its preoccupation with the protection of centralised institutions, and fails to address the application of the principles of subsidiarity as stated in the Maastricht Treaty - to allow political and administrative decisions to be taken at the lowest level of government - then it is failing in its duty to the citizen, and doing a disservice to the protection of our democracy.
At no stage did it conduct any oral hearings, or consider asking the citizen what would work best for them. We urgently need a public debate on the issue of devolution. - Yours, etc
(Councillor),
Member of the EU Committee of the Regions,
77 Grove Road,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.