A chara, – The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan is legislating to abolish all town councils and amalgamating city and county councils. He should be doing the exact opposite.
He should create more local authorities and give them more powers. Ireland is a small but very centralised state. Citizens should have more power, not less. This Government is hell-bent on eradicating as many democractic bodies as possible. In one fall of a parliamentary guillotine, the elected representatives of Údarás na Gaeltachta were done away with. Seanad Éireann was saved from a similar fate by the electorate. Now the Minister wants to butcher local government.
This newspaper reported in May this year that the Council of Europe is of the opinion that local government in Ireland is weak. The Minister wants to make it worse. The abolition of Seanad Éireann would have been of no great loss to most citizens, but the same cannot be said for local councils.
If the Minister wanted to do something progressive, he should abolish all titles of “Lord Mayor” and replace them with “Mayor” or better still, just call them by the Irish title “Méara”. Elected representatives in a republic should not have noble titles. – Is mise,
SEANÁN Ó COISTÍN,
Rue William Turner,
Bonnevoie,
Luxembourg.