An article in The Irish Times this week on Shannon, a town of 10,000 people – the size of Castlebar or Wicklow and badly lacking local amenities – illustrates many of the pathologies affecting government in Ireland. These problems are partly identified in the Government’s response to the report of the Local Democracy Taskforce it set up last year. The failure to meet the infrastructural needs of a growing and more diverse population is exacerbated by the highly centralised way those needs are addressed.
Ireland shares many of these governance problems with the UK. Andy Burnham has spent the first month of his prime ministership setting his domestic agenda and putting devolution of power from London to English regions, mayors and localities firmly on it. He speaks about the need for a written constitution to codify the UK’s intergovernmental relations.
While he has been criticised for double standards by nationalists in Scotland and Northern Ireland for saying referendums on independence and Irish unity are “off-limits” or “off the table”, his decentralising plans for England are seen as progressive but incomplete without greater fiscal and decision-making powers to implement them.
That echoes long-standing critiques of local government reforms in Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Ireland inherited its centralised state structures from the departing colonial power in 1922 and then reinforced them through the zeal of the new nationalist elite. Convinced that the local government system established in 1898 was corrupt and in need of more centralised direction, they gradually shifted power away from local authorities over the following decades. Ireland is now one of the least locally governed states in Europe.
Shannon’s problems of public facility underprovision tell that story vividly. A development plan for the town, located beside the busy industrial centre around the airport, has been delayed for 20 years by Clare county council. Public spaces, pubs and a theatre are lacking and many houses are unoccupied. Local activists live in hope of improvement; but because they have so little experience of empowered local government, they see little real prospect of it. Elsewhere in Europe decisions about the provision of family and healthcare, public spaces and housing are more often made and executed locally with much greater democratic accountability through elected representatives.
Such contradictions litter the experiences of cities, towns and rural areas all over this State. How well are they addressed by the Government’s latest proposals? The Government’s website says the Implementation Plan, developed in response to the Local Democracy Taskforce report, “sets out a comprehensive programme of reforms designed to strengthen local democracy, empower communities and enhance the role of elected councillors across Ireland.”
Opinion: Little evidence that Andy Burnham’s plan to devolve power to the regions will work
These goals are vitally important, but the effort is still halfhearted. The plan breaks them into eight strategic objectives to be implemented sequentially by 79 measures over the next ½ years before the local elections in 2029. An impressively coherent document, it is strongest on better co-ordination of central and local government, the de-siloeing of government departments, the creation of municipal councils to link urban and rural areas, the communication of results to councillors and citizens, and the establishment of key performance indicators. It is more tentative on devolving central executive and fiscal powers such as housing, transport, community health and wellbeing; and least convincing on shifting the power structures of party politics, central bureaucracy and special commercial interests which dominate existing Irish democracy and governance.
Political, civic and media reactions have been low key. Opposition parties acknowledge the need for change, but criticise the plan’s lack of firm commitment to transfer central powers. Existing stakeholders engaged with the taskforce are most favourable, notably on enhanced consultation mechanisms with their representative bodies and a greater role for women.
Reactions to the Burnham devolution plans are similar. Within a broad welcome for its ambitious goals, critics doubt whether they outstrip the machinery to accomplish them. Might they unintentionally enhance rather than achieve greater regional and social inequalities? Constitutional critics say the English-focused devolution plans will actually destabilise the UK’s union by disappointing Scottish and Irish nationalists. More generally competing priorities on economic growth, welfare spending and defence facing Burnham’s government may mean he cannot give devolution and constitutional change the attention they need to preserve the UK’s political stability.
In that case, Burnham’s confident statement that an Irish unity referendum is off the table is less convincing. All the more reason that Irish political actors should pay close attention to how British political events affect Ireland and prepare for potentially more fundamental changes in these relations, if Burnham’s reform programme falters in the next three years. Scottish researchers say his devolution programme requires close analysis to assess its means and feasibility. This is a parallel agenda on how to decentralise Irish and British governments.