Madam, – While I support the principle of electing a mayor for Dublin, which is currently proposed by Minister for the Environment John Gormley, there are still significant questions about the implementation of the new office.
Dublin-wide elections are expensive to hold and extra political offices are costly to maintain, so I believe the Minister still has some convincing to do in order to allay the warranted concern that this initiative will not be a waste of time.
As previously reported by Deaglán de Bréadún (“Draft law to elect Dublin mayor approved”, February 10th), it is envisaged that the elected mayor will have powers to instruct local authority managers on planning, waste, housing, water and transport policies.
The most prominent rationale, in my view, for creating this new role is that a major democratic vacuum exists: there is an absence of an elected mandate for the implementation of certain policies presided over by city and county managers. In justifying the creation of the role, a persuasive case must be made that the election of a mayor would allow this vacuum to be effectively negotiated.
The case of the proposed Poolbeg incinerator and Dublin City Council waste policy associated with it could be used as a litmus test to show the future influence of a mayor.
Is the mayor going to be able to direct that the use of the incinerator be prevented? If not, then what other policies as initiated by local authority managers would be insusceptible from a mayor’s instruction?
If the number of such policies would be significant, then I would challenge strongly the assertion made by Mr Gormley that the exercise of creating the office would be a worthwhile one. – Yours, etc,