Regional Authorities

[cgcsb2]

posted this in chat by accident, so I'm moving it here.

Regions of Ireland: Mid-east Regional Authorities

Above is some information on and a map of the regional authorities of Ireland.
Each one, except Dublin, has a population of in or around .5 million people.

In my opinion, This model should be used in local government instead of the county council model

because:
It would increase the efficiency of local government and reduce costs. For example North Tip and South Tip are currently administered seperately, this is a waste of money. Leitrim county council's area only includes 28,000 people.

It would mean the regional development plan would be enforced instead of it currently being ignored by the county councils.

Each region could have a directly elected mayor, someone who can be a face of each authority and who can be held accountable by the people (via the ballot box) for faliures in administering transport, waste disposal, water etc.

How do people feel about this? Is there some kind of traditional attachment to county councils in Ireland?

Also this would effictively remove the "lord Mayor" ceremonial title and his or her wages no longer existing would make a huge saving for the exchequer

[slx]

Also discussed in some depth here : http://www.politics.ie/transport/122...-scrapped.html

I'd just bare in mind with the regional authorities, that they are not necessarily all that well defined.

The main purpose of them was to draw-down EU money, so some of them were deliberately designed to be rather poor e.g. I don't think a border area authority would be appropriate or practical for regional administration. Donegal doesn't have a hell of a lot in common with Louth for example.

The basic number of authorities is about correct though.

[cgcsb2]

Yes I'm not convinced by the Bprders one myself. Drogheda in County Louth is very much part of the Dublin Commuter Belt and as a reslut, I think it should be included in Mid-East. Cavan and Monaghan should be taken into the Midlands one and Sligo, Leitrim and Donegal into the west. Although this might make the West too big in terms of land area. I'm sure we can work something out, disscussion is good, and there seems to be a lack of it when it comes to questioning the privillaged positions of county councilors and unelected lord mayors

[Gael Nua]

posted this in chat by accident, so I'm moving it here.

Regions of Ireland: Mid-east Regional Authorities

Above is some information on and a map of the regional authorities of Ireland.
Each one, except Dublin, has a population of in or around .5 million people.

In my opinion, This model should be used in local government instead of the county council model

because:
It would increase the efficiency of local government and reduce costs. For example North Tip and South Tip are currently administered seperately, this is a waste of money. Leitrim county council's area only includes 28,000 people.

It would mean the regional development plan would be enforced instead of it currently being ignored by the county councils.

Each region could have a directly elected mayor, someone who can be a face of each authority and who can be held accountable by the people (via the ballot box) for faliures in administering transport, waste disposal, water etc.

How do people feel about this? Is there some kind of traditional attachment to county councils in Ireland?

Also this would effictively remove the "lord Mayor" ceremonial title and his or her wages no longer existing would make a huge saving for the exchequer

+1

[seenitallb4]

Will they cost less? If so, I am for them.

[cgcsb2]

seenitallb4, yes they will cost less because one regional authority will employ less useless councilors then the current 4 or 5 county councils in each area.

[slx]

From the other thread :

I would basically propose something like this :

A radical shake up would be :

1) Merge all of the Dublin local authorities into a single Dublin Regional Authority.

2) Get rid of 50% of the councillors, most of them don't actually do anything anyway!

3) Scrap the Lord Mayor's post and archaic title. Waste of money, and throw back to the British days.

4) Directly elect an executive Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

5) Give the regional authority autonomy over transportation issues.

6) Give the regional authority responsibility and funds to run schools fully.

7) The council would elect a member responsible for policy in each area i.e. waste management, transportation, schools/education, parks, water, etc.

The do same for Cork's two local authorities.

in other areas, merge counties into regional authorities.

Outside of Cork and Dublin, most of the Counties don't make much sense, other than in a historical context. They've tiny populations and would be far better served by an effective, slimmed down regional authority and a regional mayor for accountability.

I was also saying that there would be no reason to get overly emotional about it either. We could keep the existing county structure for non-official purposes, much like we do with the historical provinces. There's no particular logic to the existing counties as administrative units as they don't reflect population spread, or need for services or anything really.

I think however, that we would absolutely have to call the new units something other than counties, as this would definitely rub some people up the wrong way and cause confusion.

This would also mean that existing tourism marketing of say Kerry or Galway etc etc could continue without any fuss. They are huge trademarks in their own rights.

France managed to do this in 1790, when it dumped its historical comtés (counties) in favour of more sensibly laid out Départments.

However, the comtés still live on on bottles of wine, cheese names, and in tourism brochures and local casual usage.