Anti-corruption measures applied to national politics need to apply also to local councillors, writes Elaine Byrne.
RTÉ 1 television's Prime Time Investigatesprogramme on Monday night showed us how far we've come from the zealous rezoning days of the 1970s and 1980s. Not that far apparently.
Councillor Hughie McElvaney of Fine Gael is a popular man in Clones, Co Monaghan, having topped the poll in the 1999 and 2004 local elections. His planning logic is straightforward.
"We are not experts in planning," he said. "If there's not a hill on it . . . if it's suitable for sewage, then it's suitable for planning."
Prime Timehighlighted the astonishing rezoning decisions in the Ballybay flood plains and the tiny village of Connons in Monaghan, which the Minister for Environment and Local Government has since rejected.
The local government accountability framework is not as vigorous as its national counterpart. This is curious given the findings of the Mahon tribunal. The Minister has promised to address this in the Green Paper on Local Government Reform, which will be published after Christmas.
The public consultation process has recently ended. Over 100 submissions were received. Most focused on directly-elected mayors, the creation of extra town councils and the balance of power between the county manager and the elected representatives. Submissions on ethics were not as prominent.
The ethics policy within local government has been one of autonomy. This has largely failed. National accountability mechanisms, such as the Standards Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor General, have been decentralised to the local authorities.
This has facilitated unnecessary confusion, particularly in the public's mind, regarding where responsibilities lie for the already complex network of ethics and electoral legislation.
The Green Paper presents an opportunity to redress this anomaly. The Local Elections Act, 1999 and Local Government Act, 2001 bypassed specific provisions of the Electoral Act, 1997. These should be reintroduced as a matter of urgency. As was originally envisaged, the Standards Commission, and not the relevant local authority, should be the responsible body for the disclosure of donations and expenditure.
A perception that transparency and integrity within the structures and processes of local government is weak may be warranted.
This is unfortunate, given the quantity of legislative provisions introduced in the last 10 years. A failure to implement this legislation thoroughly has contributed to the undermining of local government legitimacy.
In the small Tipperary village of Puckaun, residents repeatedly cited a failure of trust and "had a lack of trust in the system".
For example, a survey of the register of interests by Prime Timefound that, remarkably, 97 per cent of Clare councillors had no interest in their own family home. This was also the case for two-thirds of councillors in 10 other counties.
Not owning their own homes is not a phenomenon among councillors, but rather a symptom of non-compliance and not filling out the forms properly.
When asked about his ethical obligations, McElvaney said: "If that's the ethics thing you're talking about . . . it's filling a form . . . it doesn't affect us."
But an ethics framework should not be simply reduced to filling out the form. We seem quite happy to hold fast to the "three Ps" principle, where we print the legislation, post it up for all to see and pray that it works.
Well it hasn't worked. Although councillors should be aware of their ethical obligations, one way or the other, they are not.
Gardaí are currently investigating Cllr Patrick O'Donoghue, a Fianna Fáil member of Killarney Town Council, regarding alleged breaches of the Local Government Act.
When asked by the Standards Commission if he realised he was doing anything wrong, O'Donoghue said: "Obviously not, no, I wouldn't have done it if I felt I was doing anything wrong."
The Green Paper is not enough. The Minister should also conduct a comprehensive review of the ethical framework for local government, in particular, how this interconnects with the current ethics legislation.
Such a framework would specify an unequivocal complaints procedure. This in turn would help to clarify the respective roles of the local authority and the Standards Commission.
The Minister and the councillors have specific responsibilities to ensure that the ethics framework works. But so do political parties.
Where is their voice in all of this? Have political parties provided guidelines or direction to councillors on planning? Why do councillors with the same political affiliation have extremely different positions on planning?
We are asking people with generally no skills in planning to make life-altering planning decisions.
Councillors need regular training on how to draft local area plans, and county and city development plans. Political parties need to take leadership.
Assumptions that corruption was largely confined to Dublin, and that we are over the worst of it, do not stand up to scrutiny.
Dr Elaine Byrne recently completed her doctorate at the University of Limerick on the history of Irish political corruption and is writing a book on the subject. She was one of those who did make a submission on the Green Paper for Local Government Reform