Council round-up

BY ROISIN DE ROSA

The four new Sinn Féin elected councillors on Donegal County Council made history at their first council meeting, when they successfully challenged Fianna Fáil's 14 elected councillors, along with two Blaneyite 'Independents'. In a council of 29 members, these 16 had combined in a pact to monopolise all 180 council positions to be filled at the council AGM, and dictate council business.

What's new? Unionists have been doing this for years, most recently in Lisburn council, where Sinn Féin has challenged the quite undemocratic practice of enforcing majority rule and excluding other elected councillors. But times have changed.

Donegal Council

At the Donegal AGM, for the first time in 37 years of Donegal council meetings, the disgraceful practice of cornering and dominating all council business through pacts with a majority party on the council was challenged. The democratic entitlement of all councillors to be included in appointments to council positions was asserted.

"Our voters are not second-class voters, counting for less than the votes of other parties, and nor are the votes received by other councillors less than equal," said poll-topping Sinn Féin Councillor Thomas Pringle. "We looked for a power sharing agreement — that no councillor should be excluded — that the people who had voted for them to be treated as equals. We were looking for basic democratic rights. That's all."

The Sinn Féin councillors pointed out that, according to standing orders, the vote needed to be a secret ballot — that the circus of repeated hand raising for Fianna Fáil nominees was simply not acceptable.

Furthermore, it states in the legislation (Local Government Act 2001) that councils "must comply with the guidelines" issued by the minister that "the procedures are to apply which ensure fairness and equity" in the appointment of chairpersons of the Strategic Policy Committees. The majority on Donegal Council were acting quite illegitimately.

As Sinn Féin raised these points, the Chair ran for cover, adjourned the council, and resumed to declare that legal advice on the matter needed to be sought. The AGM was suspended until this Friday 9 July. It was undoubtedly a victory for democracy.

Power Sharing

Monaghan County Council, where Sinn Féin has now a large block of seven councillors, worked to a power sharing agreement between all councillors, despite the reluctance of Fine Gael members to include the independent councillor.

Power sharing has been the case since 1999, when Sinn Féin first won a sizeable block of six members and overturned the practice until then of carving up positions on the council by dominant parties, to the exclusion of other councillors.

Dublin Council

Dublin council was different. It implemented the legislation by sharing out Strategic Policy Committee chairs in a meeting of group leaders. The Labour councillors (15 seats) and the Fine Gael (10 seats) took two SPC chairs each, leaving one for Sinn Féin (10 seats) and the remaining one for Fianna (12 seats. The independents (3) and the single Greens and PD councillors were excluded.

Earlier in the day, the civic alliance charter was launched, a common platform of Fine Gael, Green and Labour Party, calling on the government to pay rates on their property in Dublin, which would bring €22 million into the council's much depleted coffers. Will Fine Gael be supporting this move in Leinster House, or is it just a publicity stunt, some councillors wanted to know?

A Charade

Sinn Féin called for "immediate action to resolve the crisis in Dublin hospitals" - but Fianna Fáil's 12 councillors would not agree to discuss the motion. However, a proposal from Sinn Féin's Daithí Doolan slamming the proposed closure of Blindcraft, a Department of Health and Children project that employs 27 blind people and eight sighted people, was passed unanimously even though it was clearly against Fianna Fáil Government policy, which is to implement the closure. Where is the logic? Is politics in the council reduced to a charade of posturing, with no prospect of affecting Dublin's real problems?

The Sinn Féin councillors made powerful speeches on resolutions raising the issues of unemployment in Dublin's inner city, the drugs problems, and the need for community accountability of the gardaí, who, as Daithi Doolan pointed out, are only involved in the RAPID (a scheme in severely disadvantaged areas) by their rapid disappearance from the scene.

Resolutions called for immediate action by the council. What immediate action?

"No Policy Pacts"

Other councillors across the state formed technical groups, which involved no commitment to policy. "There was no way that we in Sinn Féin would enter any pact or alliance where we were committed to voting in certain ways on certain issues, like for example the budget, or planning issues," John Dwyer, elected to Wexford County Council and New Ross Town Council, points out.

"We made it very clear throughout negotiations on New Ross Town Council that our voting agreement with Fine Gael's two, and Labour's two members, which outvotes Fianna Fáil's four councillors, carried no party voting commitments, and we took the discussion back into the cumann, where we all decided what course we should take."

Housing a major issue

On Wexford County Council, Sinn Féin secured power sharing through forming a technical group with independents. As a result, Sinn Féin got the chair of the housing Strategic Policy Committee, which, as John Dwyer points out, "is important to us in the county, especially given our manifesto commitment to radically change the differential rents scheme.

"At present, local authority rents are treated by the councils as a source of income, not as providing a service. This is wrong. Rents can be exorbitant when based, as at present, on the earnings of all those who live in the house, even though they may not all make a contribution to the rent. We're saying the rent on council housing should be capped at 12% of the earnings of the principal earner in the household.

"Furthermore, there are people living in local authority houses for over 25 years, who have sometimes paid rents equal to far in excess of the cost to the council of building the house in the first place. This house should be theirs. They have often paid more than double for it, over the years."

Hard lessons

Council AGMs across the 26 Counties brought hard lessons in democracy, and promised harder ones on equality. They are contests that have begun and will continue for five years, but at least the battle for equality has been engaged. It is a contest essentially between those who recognise the value of democracy and equality, those many who support a new Ireland not based on power and greed, and those who don't.

It is the defining issue in politics today, and the contest needs to be taken to every village and town across the country, if we are to move towards an Ireland of equals — to build the community for change.