Council 'league tables' welcomed

The Republic's county managers yesterday said they had nothing to fear from plans to publish "league tables" of the performances of local authorities.

From next year, the league tables will show how local authorities - including town councils - perform their duties with regard to 42 services from planning to pollution.

Performance in areas such as library opening hours, the number of housing vacancies, Traveller accommodation and recycling facilities is to be recorded by the local authorities concerned. The performance is to be independently monitored by the Local Government Services Board.

The results are to be available to the local authorities and to members of the public to allow them to gauge the performance of one local authority against another. Members of the public should be able, for example, to compare service charges for waste with the frequency of collection, and establish whether other authorities were offering better value for money.

On planning and building control, the local authorities are to be monitored on the time taken to determine an application, the number of applications, the time taken to get a pre-planning discussion and the coincidence with Bord Pleanála rulings.

The initiative was agreed between officials of the Department of the Environment, local authorities and the Institute of Public Administration.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative in Government Buildings yesterday, a number of local authority managers said the system might result in surprises for critics of local government.

The Wicklow county manager, Mr Eddie Sheehy, was one who welcomed the initiative, which he predicted would bring confidence to local authority staff. He said the information on staff performance was already available in annual reports.

The manager of Cork City Council, Mr Joe Gavin, added that it was "also made available with the (financial) estimates".

The Galway county manager, Mr Donal O'Donoghue, said many local authority officials were enthusiastic about the project.

However, criticism has come from the Labour spokesman on the environment, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, who claimed it was "proof that local government reform had visibly failed".

"Why does local government now need to be audited if the reforms introduced by this Minister and his predecessor were successful?"

The Chambers of Commerce of Ireland have also welcomed the initiative, but warned it did not go far enough in recognising the business community as paymasters of local authorities.

The organisation's chief executive, Mr John Dunne, said "while this is useful for benchmarking , it doesn't go far enough for those who are funding the local authorities in terms of drilling down value for money".