You can read it below and on the Irish Times website.

Ending the Department of the Environment’s stranglehold over local government is the key to effective reform, writes DERMOT LACEY

FOR IRELAND’S sake, Dublin needs to run Dublin. The present situation – in which an array of uninterested quangos, largely unaccountable State bodies and often disconnected departments interfere in the affairs of the county without any appreciable knowledge or sympathy for the region – cannot continue. Quite simply, Dublin deserves better.

The situation whereby more than 40 organisations have responsibility for traffic is the most obvious example of this. But there are more.

Read the rest here.

“Some of it is owed for developments already done, and the rest is for developments that might not proceed,” Labour councillor Dermot Lacey said.

“There is a problem about collection. There’s a fault line in the linking of income to the council with the granting of permissions.

“There is going to be enormous problems in the city council over the next couple of years. The real problem is the repayments for work that’s already under way. There’s a real problem for funding of local authorities, and they’re huge issues.”

You can read the full article, which was also carried in the Evening Herald, here.

“Should I stay or Should I go?” So sang The Clash in their classic hit of the 1980′s. According to “Village” it is a question being asked by many members of City and County Councils, particularly in the Dublin area. In the December issue, former Councillor, Mick Rafferty told us why he was leaving and Fine Gael’s, Gerry Breen, why he was staying. The common feature of both was their sense of defeatism. Mick is calling it a day because he thought the procedures and politicking were too much and Gerry is staying, even though he is unhappy with the ways things work, or more accurately don’t work.

Regrettably Gerry offered no new ideas and Mick retreated to the concept, so beloved of those who actually wield power, of “participative democracy”. A policy that sounds good in theory but ensures in practice that real power remains with the elite.

The picture, Mick painted, of the role of a Councillor, is not one I share. In my sixteen years as a member of Dublin City Council I am proud of a record of achievement that has benefited both Dublin and my own electoral areas. I have also by and large enjoyed the work.

Nor do I agree with Mick’s apparent view that all Councillors somehow share the same agenda and should work as if we are all on some agreed common course. I am a Labour member of the Council. I seek to advance my Social Democratic policies. I do not share the political objectives of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael or Sinn Fein.

Nor do I share the views of the Progressive Democrats, with whose very capable Councillor, Wendy Hederman, I did share an electoral area. We worked well together and I agree that she was a constructive and able member of the Council. I was genuinely sorry to see her depart. However that was her personal decision. She knew the rules before seeking election as did Mick Rafferty himself. The same may not be said for all the others who have resigned their seats. However, it is worth noting that of the sixteen, some went because they were elected to the Oireachtas, others because a political career had effectively been closed off by rivals, one moved to live abroad and some because their personal lives had changed since their initial election.

By and large we as Councillors do not set the rules by which the Council operates. More often than not they are imposed on us from The Custom House. It was from there that the Strategic Policy Committees, Corporate Policy Groups and City and County Development Boards were dreamt up. It is these unproductive structures that impose the wasteful time constraints on Councillors. These are but some of the areas we need to change.

Mick is correct that the Housing – Strategic Policy Committee, chaired by my colleague, former Councillor Mary Murphy, over the last few years published progressive policy papers on housing and related matters. In better times I hope that these yield fruit.

Yet, the reality is that during our “Celtic Tiger” years, as the policy papers piled up, the housing and homelessness list of Dublin City Council rose in parallel. The reality is that these Strategic Policy Committees were designed to contain Councillors rather than empower us. “Keep them busy and they will be less of a nuisance.” We will not however force change by walking away from the problem.

For me Local Government matters. In terms of planning, housing, community development, provision of accessible recreational, cultural and sporting opportunities it is very often the first point of call. The fact that it has been starved of funding over the last decade should not obscure that fact.

Yes, I want real reform and if Village gives me the space I will be more than happy to come back to that in detail future editions.

While the detail of such reform is extensive the essentials are not. If they are to be in any way meaningful they must include:
- An Independent source of funding for Local Authorities and not subject to the whims of the Department of the Environment.
- Reform of the City and County Managers Act creating a new post of Chief Executive Officer – accountable to and appointed by the relevant Local Authority following recruitment through the Public Appointments Commission.
- A directly elected Mayor of Dublin with a five year term and accountable to an enhanced Dublin Regional Authority.
- The extension of the role of the Dublin Regional Authority to include Transport and Planning and subsuming bodies such as the Dublin Transport Authority and the Affordable Housing Partnership.
- Real controls and limitations on electoral spending at local elections.

I sought election many years ago to improve my local community and because I enjoyed the cut and thrust of political life. In one of the many deserving tributes to the late Tony Gregory, one person wrote of Tony’s legal struggle to remain a member of the City Council following the ban on holding the dual mandate. Tony sought to retain his Council seat because he too knew that Local Government matters. The author of that tribute was Mick Rafferty. Mick was right.

I have never regretted my decision to seek election to the Council and my belief that local government is the best model to deliver real reform to Irish Society has intensified over those years. The Public need and deserve a better system. It is time for those who agree with me to “Stand up for Democracy, Stand up for Local Government” and in my case “Stand up for Dublin”.

Dermot Lacey is a Dublin City Councillor representing Pembroke-Rathmines Ward with the Labour Party.

MILLIONS of euro of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on signs erected on construction sites throughout Ireland, according to a Dublin city councillor.

The official signs, which advertise projects being carried out under the National Development Plan, are costing up to €5,000 each.

Labour councillor Dermot Lacey has called for an end to the “wasteful” practice. He was angered when he first discovered that a single sign at the entrance to an affordable housing development at Beech Hill in Donnybrook in Dublin cost €4,994 to erect.

You can read the full article here.

The Herald quotes Dermot:

Labour councillor Dermot Lacey was not impressed with the response.

He said, in a lot of cases, residents have implemented agreements among themselves to allow for on-street parking.

Restriction

“We have been trying to put order on this. We wanted to be allowed, subject to the usual checks and balances like wheelchair access, to paint a white line along the footpath whereby cars could park halfway up the footpath,” Mr Lacey said.

He suggested Wilfield Road and Gilford Avenue in Sandymount would have been suitable areas to try out the new parking initiative.

“They would be ideal models for this initiative. There are more and more cars and people aren’t bringing them to work as much so they are lying in an area all day. Parking congestion is now increasing,” Mr Lacey said.

The full article can be seen at Herald.ie.

Poolbeg Chimneys (photo: infomatique)

Dermot is quoted in today’s Evening Herald in a story about the online petition to save the Poolbeg (aka Pigeon House) ESB Generating Station’s iconic chimneys.

Councillor Dermot Lacey is also hoping that Dublin City Council will be able to protect the 207m twin structures from destruction.

Iconic

“These are iconic symbols and have provided the backdrop to the city of Dublin. It’s the first thing you see on the way in to Dublin and the last thing you see when you leave,” he said.

However, a recent study undertaken by Dublin City Council stated that the stacks are “not of sufficient value to be listed as a protected structure”.

The planners said the stacks were currently of architectural interest due to their height, but their present prominence “will be diminished by upcoming developments in the docklands area”.

But carefully thought out plans could redevelop the site into an iconic reminder of Ireland’s industrial and social heritage.

“We are quite bad at protecting our industrial heritage,” said Cllr Lacey. “With the redevelopment of the docks area, I think it would be a good opportunity to mark and recognise the hard working people of an era who formed our city.”

The rest of the article is here.  It references a petition, but unfortunately nobody seems to know where that is!  Drop us a comment below if you do.

councillors said the money would not offset the 5 per cent reduction in local government funding from the exchequer, and that local authorities were being used as tax collectors for the Government.

“This is a con job. Local authorities are being used as the collector generals for the Government,” said Dublin city councillor Dermot Lacey (Labour).

Although the vast majority of the State’s rental properties are located in Dublin, the city will not get to keep the proportion of the charge it generates but will have to collect it for distribution through a central fund.

“I’m actually really disappointed with this. I favour such taxes, but I favour local government raising money and spending money. This is going to cost us as a city money to administer; we are going to be tax collectors for the Government who might in their goodness give us some proportion of it back,” Mr Lacey said.

More here.

The Holy Faith Sisters have applied for permission to demolish the school at Haddington Road, and replace it with luxury apartments.  The school closed in 2007 after more than 100 years.

From The Irish Times:

Councillors last night said the sisters should not be granted planning permission for the development because of the lack of schools in the area.

“We can’t sell off our schools to support the living standards of nuns. The nuns are entitled to a better standard of living in the future, but we can’t see another educational institution in this area going,” Labour councillor Dermot Lacey said.

In the 2004 city development plan the councillors put “Z15″ zoning on the lands, which aims to maintain institutional use of a site.

Update:

Brendan also mentions this.