In between preparing a delegation for the World Special Olympics, and chairing the St Patrick's Festival, Mary Davis has been travelling the country chairing the Taskforce on Active Citizenship. Kathy Sheridanmeets her at home in Sutton.
You should be careful what you wish for. The Taoiseach wanted to start a "national conversation". Now that he's got the nation babbling, he might just want to shut it up again.
His motives were impeccable. Something valuable was vanishing. He took up Robert Puttnam's Bowling Alone for bedtime reading and began to glimpse worrying parallels between small-town USA and boomtown Ireland: a loss of community spirit, disappearing values, a decline in volunteerism, all wrapped up in what he might call galloping secularism.
And perhaps he then took a look at another kind of US model. Visitors to a certain type of Smalltown, USA, might sniff at the Stars and Stripes on every lawn, the Christian fundamentalists on every corner, the overarching credo of traditional family values, but the sense of order, pride and community spirit that often accompany them can seem rather attractive.
That combination of Faith, Family and Fellowship may well be what the Taoiseach was aiming for when - possibly adopting You'll Never Bowl Alone as his anthem - he whistled up a task force. The brief was to take the national pulse and find ways to promote "active citizenship", and Mary Davis, a member of The Irish Times Trust and the dynamo behind the 2003 World Special Olympics, was invited to chair it.
"The Taoiseach certainly felt that we had lost something," explains Davis, "that we had spent the past 10 to 15 years building the economy in Ireland - and a very successful economy, as we all know - and I suppose he felt the time had come to take stock, to ask questions such as 'Are we building a society or are we building an economy? What are we doing?'".
Mary Davis is much too discreet to say so, but he may have stirred up rather more than he bargained for. She and her team have returned in their allotted nine months, after seven nationwide public meetings, with a report and recommendations based on 1,142 submissions (due to be published next Wednesday) about which she is understandably coy. Who, after all, wants to steal the Taoiseach's thunder, especially on such a worthy initiative?
But it is remarkable how often in a lengthy interview the woman who gave us those fiercely proud and magical communal moments around the Special Olympics, returns to the sense of cynicism picked up at the public consultations.
Amid the understandable but predictable talk about diminishing time, commitment and values, she notes: "There was certainly a sense of cynicism throughout it all and people were certainly sceptical. There was a sense of 'Ah not another group coming to consult, not another report that's going to lie on the shelf'. They were saying 'is anyone listening to us? You come and you consult with us but are you actually listening? Are things changing because of what we said?' They were telling us that we're losing sight of community, and that scepticism and cynicism is there as well. They feel disengaged on a number of fronts."
And, she stresses, the people saying this were the converted, the decent citizens already engaged enough and involved enough in their communities to leave their homes on cold, wet evenings to offer their tuppence-worth at these meetings - "and if they were feeling that way, what about the people then who didn't turn up, and aren't involved at all in any way in the whole area of active citizenship?"
Well, what ails them?
What Davis picked up from the public was a longing "for the ordinary person in the street to have a voice, an influence about what is happening in their community. Rather than the county council sitting and deciding what is happening in their community, the people want to be involved, to have a say. But what they're telling us is that 'nobody comes back to us and tells us why not, so if I would like to have something done in my community and I go and try to get it done and it doesn't happen, nobody comes back and tells me why it didn't happen.' And most people are fairly reasonable," adds Davis. "If somebody comes back and says 'we'd like to do that but it's not possible because of x and y', then they might not be happy but they'll accept it."
Olivia O'Leary, cutting loose about the implacable, money-grubbing, pro-developer, anti-citizen face of Dún Laoghaire local authority, summed it up in her RTÉ Drivetime slot last week: "It seems to me that almost every contact I have with my local authority is a hostile one. That they dislike me. That they dislike us residents. There is a disconnect between councils and those affected by their decisions . . ."
The commission's consultation document, published in November, confirms that O'Leary is not on a paranoid solo run: "Strong feelings were expressed", it states, "about disaffection from the political processes by citizens, a lack of accountability by public bodies and a democratic deficit at local level."
Davis believes the problem may be about communications. "I don't know that we're good in Ireland about communicating with people and ensuring that people are informed." Closer questioning reveals that she is talking about local authorities. "They should be getting the message back. Maybe the decisions they're making are reasonable, but if people don't know about it, how can they react in a positive way? So you get that sense of negativity creeping in."
O'Leary is not so generous. She blames "firstly, the overweening power given to unelected officials - county managers and secretaries who are hardly accountable at all to elected councillors; secondly, the abolition of domestic rates in the 1970s which broke the link between residents and councils. We no longer pay the rates so we no longer call the tune."
Again, O'Leary's sense of powerlessness is backed up by the Davis consultation document, which made planning, though related to government, a "stand-alone issue" in the document, because it was raised "so forcefully" throughout the consultation process. A majority mentioned the "adverse affects on citizens, on social capital and on community development", resulting from "the countless examples of housing estates developed without transport, schools, community facilities or other amenities, and of dormitory towns being created where residents had no community stake".
It could not be clearer in its message: "The absence of meaningful opportunities for civic participation in decision-making about local communities, and society more generally, was identified as a significant barrier to the development of a strong and active citizenry."
Both O'Leary and Davis refer admiringly to the French system of local democracy. "They have elected mayors in very small communities of 600 to 800 people and if they have an issue, they feel their voice will be heard," says Davis. She notes there is a similar systems in place in the US.
But no, she says, anticipating the question; the task force will not be including French-style Mairies in its recommendations. One recommendation it will be making is the opening up of schools in the evenings to facilitate meetings for small, cash-strapped community organisations. Other recommendations will be revealed next week when the report is launched.
But how much can such recommendations achieve if even active citizens already feel disenfranchised? If a respected, nationally-known citizen such as Olivia O'Leary is so alienated by her local authority, how must it be for those further down the socio-economic ladder? Urging an educated citizenry to be nicer to the neighbours simply doesn't cut it any more.
Citizenship European style
Whether you want to change a street name or a bus route, there are a number of options for German citizens to get involved in local politics.
Beyond the federal government in Berlin and the 16 state governments, there is lively political scene at a municipal level and even at neighbourhood level, and involvement does not require joining a political party.
Individual citizens with special experience - of everything from youth affairs or sport, to waste disposal or health matters - can make contact with political parties to be appointed as one of their "competent citizens" to sit on council committees that can make important decisions.
A similar system governs the system of "honorary judges", two of whom sit with a full-time judge in labour and social welfare courts. The full-time judge sets the legal framework while the honorary judges bring their life experience to verdicts with a wide remit.
Anyone who wants to stay away from politics can start their own "citizen's initiative" and gather 20,000 signatures and start a political ball rolling, From extending the route of school buses to the future of city airports. Local authorities provide full details of how to collect signatures and even templates on their websites. All elected officials, from MPs to councillors, hold clinics. Also, every six weeks, citizens have access to their elected officials for an hour before town council meetings, to pose questions. Derek Scally
The American way
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Rudi Giuliani and John McCain may have started the race for the White House almost two years in advance, but in America, it often seems that everyone is running for something. Governors, mayors and their deputies are all elected, often after bitter fights, as are some judges and other law officers. Some of the liveliest contests, however, are for places on community bodies such as school or library boards.
Even the smallest political campaigns cost money, and fund-raisers - sometimes with participants paying just $10 or $25 each - are an essential part of American political life. At the top level, fund-raisers offer rich donors access to candidates that others cannot enjoy, but at the community level, they serve to involve more people in the political process. The same is true of networking websites such as moveon.org, which opposes the Iraq war, and countless myspace.com and facebook.com sites devoted to political causes.
Ted McConnell, director of the Campaign to Promote Civic Education, says that active citizenship goes far beyond political action. "It means that if you see something in your community, whether it is homelessness or litter, you decide to take action with others to address it," he says.
McConnell argues that active citizenship is learnt behaviour which can benefit from better civic education classes in schools. "Study after study shows that young people want to get involved and give something back but they don't want to use traditional political structures." He points to the example of Cabrini-Green, a notorious Chicago housing project, where Middle School students lobbied the school board and local legislators and persuaded them to close down their dilapidated school building. Denis Staunton