New Book on Dublin's Future

[Tea Party Patriot]

leaving aside the personal bit - that was a good assesment McDave - lets try and get the debate going. Local Government reform can transform Ireland.

What would you think for a start that when the Government holds the referendum on abolishing the senate they also hold one dramatically increasing the number of people a TD can represent. This to me is one of the essential difficulties that must be fixed before the local can be taken out of national politics and the reforming of councils can take place.

Two few people represented by a TD keeps his focus in interfering in the local and not concentrating on the national.

[wombat]

While I liked your post I can see one flaw, in order to get an eye kept on national issues the constituencies would have to be large enough to negate local issues as sufficient to be elected.

There is no way of getting away from the importance of local issues - the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" gives a good insight and according to Wilson, its quite accurate. We need to shift the balance from predominantly local to predominantly national and I believe that many TDs would be more interested in staying in local govt if they felt they could achieve real influence and in my opinion, the problem lies with the county manager system.

[Tea Party Patriot]

There is no way of getting away from the importance of local issues - the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" gives a good insight and according to Wilson, its quite accurate. We need to shift the balance from predominantly local to predominantly national and I believe that many TDs would be more interested in staying in local govt if they felt they could achieve real influence and in my opinion, the problem lies with the county manager system.

I don't like the county manager system myself, but we also have to remember the reason local lost its power in Ireland was because of corruption. Any new local government would want to be covering large geographical areas with and would also want to incorporate a council version of the Dáil's own ethics committee.

[Tea Party Patriot]

There is no way of getting away from the importance of local issues - the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" gives a good insight and according to Wilson, its quite accurate. We need to shift the balance from predominantly local to predominantly national and I believe that many TDs would be more interested in staying in local govt if they felt they could achieve real influence and in my opinion, the problem lies with the county manager system.

No you will never fully get away from them, even on a larger scale for all the talk on here about how countries like the UK and Germany are better than us in this respect you could even argue that a EU level they themselves often play the "local" card, albeit disguised under the name of nationalism.

What I am saying though is that if the required electorate is larger that it should help to deflect some of the attention from the microscopic local issues that prevail at the moment.

I really loved that film "Charlie Wilson's War" by the way. Well worth watching.

[McDave]

In Mercer's Quality of Life survey for 2011 'Dublin ranks 26th best city in the world for quality of living, in a list of 221 cities worldwide'. It rates even better (16th) for personal safety: Dublin 26th in quality-of-life survey - The Irish Times - Tue, Nov 29, 2011

This survey rates cities from the perspective of international movers and shakers and their particular concerns. But regardless of where one might stand on evaluation criteria, it still looks like Dublin rates up there with the better northern European cities. Despite its many imperfections, Dublin obviously has something to work on.

[McDave]

*bump*

Cllr? Alonso?

[cllr]

Only quibble with this of course is that it is 25 places out. Dublin is of course the Best City in the World.

[McDave]

Only quibble with this of course is that it is 25 places out. Dublin is of course the Best City in the World.

I wasn't strictly referring to the survey. I was thinking more about general discussion around the book and your call to get the debate going!