Before I seen the options available I thought this would have been my answer! :-)

I fear the word “reform” has become solely about money,cutting&abolishing…rather than sufficiently changing structures and improving inefficiencies!

A recent example is the Public Sector “reform” that is occuring.

All the smaller countries would have similar rates to our rep. levels, though they would have a lot more, and more power at local level.

You cannot compare a small country like ours to massive ones like those. It just doesn’t make sense.

As for the idea of having 55 TD’s in the Dáil. That would mean Govt. here would fall apart over night, you think it has been bad up to this.

We need to look at what countries like Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland do. Learn from what works for them.

One thing they all have though is that they are not overly concerned about how many reps they have, and they have lots, but the population are concerned about the quality of work and hold people to account.

How many of ye have ever gone to a TD’s office to complain about legislation, how many have ever called them up, sent an email and do this regularly.

If you don’t then all for all your complaining and whinging this mess is as much your fault as any bent politician.

I disagree. This Fine Gael stunt will mean that unelected officials can exert upward pressure on rates and charge whatever they want. That’s the trick by Phil Hogan. By expanding the municipality, he is effectively making it mandatory for councils to charge above €1,000 on property tax.

(assuming property tax will be abolished after the next election).

Big Phil at his best.

Proper order,bring them down to 55 and bring there salary in line with other eu mop,thou u know turkeys don’t for Xmas so this lot would never do it

There are theoretical arguments that the size of a legislature should proportional to the cube root of the number of voters. It’s unrealistic to compare small and large countries in this regard.

France is misleading because they have a massive number of Councillors and representatives at local level. To have their proportionality would only leave us with under 50 TDs. Combine that with Seanad abolition and you have a dangerously low number of national representatives.

I would rather cut the expenses and pay of TDs than drastically reduce the number.

If we only had 55 TDs then minority voices would find it very difficult to get elected or have much say. Would there be as many independents or a proper opposition with such a small number of representatives? Especially when 30 would be in government as ministers. I really don’t think so. I’d argue that reforming the role of a TD is much more important.

Much of this reduce the TDs populism derives from the idea we spend a vast amount on the Oireachtas each year. As far as I know it was a total of €100m last year. A lot, but still nothing compared to the waste in other areas.

New Zealand is a better country to compare Ireland with given their population being around the same as ours, as well as their democracy established a similar length of time.

They elect 121 MPs using an MMP (voters choose party and constituency candidate) system and have no upper house (Senate).

*conform.

Yes, Mafia type, Moe.

Yes but the majority of these plans were outlined in the respective manifestos of FG and Labour.

The Fine Gael mainifesto certainly rules out the possibility of an annual recurring charge on the family home which they deemed to be unfair (Feb 2011)

Actually, it’s about letting different tiers of government do what they can do best. We know national government – that’s supposed to deal with national issues – works more like local government.

This needs to change.

Starting from the bottom, each level needs to specialise in what it does best. District government needs to deal with district-level issues. Regional government needs to deal with regional-level issues. National government needs to deal with national issues. These levels should compliment each other but not overlap.

This is also the principle of the European Union, and this principle is something we’re obliged to ensure as part of our membership of the EU.

This seems to be the attempt here. I hope it’s genuine.

Plenty of Labour and Sinn Féin councillors like that as well.

Parish politics it may be but the people elect whoever goes in and despite the bankruptcy of the state a shockingly large % of population voted FF, and a large number voted SF – failed terrorists who have strong links to fuel laundering and criminality. Democracy can be a bitch….

Local taxation levied locally but still sent to the exchequer as per Minister Hogan yesterday.So hard to hold local councillors to task if monies are sent to central funds only to be redistrubuted throughout the country.

John Gormley instigated investigations into the planning irregularities of 6 Local Authorities. Phil Hogan swept them under the carpet. While those referred to but not named in the Mahon report are still sitting on Local Authorities there will be no real reform. Only one councillor is in Jail. The investigations must be made; they may cost money but there should be a saving on wages and pensions for corrupt County Managers, Planners Engineers and Politicians.

That’s also true. And people should be held to account for that.

At the same time, this could be a chance to fix many, though not all, of the problems of Irish governance.

What do these proposals have to do with the investigations? They shouldn’t hold up meaningful reform. Assuming this is what it is.

I jthink meaningful reform would root the rot out first. While some councillors colluded with the corruption, others didn’t they queried decisions and kept an eye on waste. So while nothing is done about the rot the agents we did have to police the local Authorities will be reduced.

@Thomas just fact checking you on one point, Naas does have a town council.

Why do we constantly compare ourselves to the British?

Well thats another problem for another day Colm. It was just an example for councillors to population. It just happened to be Manchester. I wasn’t comparing us to the British. :)

Geographically does Manchester cover the same area as the Republic?

How should we do this?

Nope! Hence why I said we could probably do with 5 councillors and not 1. I’m only making an observation guys…. the fact is we have too many (not all) over-paid people in this country whose main interest is self- interest and not the COUNTRIES- (note the capitals as I specifically meant COUNTRIES not counties)! Why do we always have to delve into the nitty gritty stuff! The system we have has failed us time and time again. But we still seem to just fumble along. Does change scare us that much?? We can’t get any worse by changing things up, can we??

You could compare all of England to 2 cities in China. It would be just as pointless and useless to any meaningful way forward.

Looking at a country like Britain with a vastly different economic story, vastly different scale is completely foolish. Look at countries our size that are really well run. Ironically they all would have significantly more local reps than we have.

I agree fully with your last 5 lines though.

Erm that’s flawed population and council maths Keith, City of Manchester has approx 400,000 to 500,000 people and one council, the Greater Manchester urban area has approx 2.5 million people and including the city council, 10 councils!

Which weirdly if you are using Manchester as a template means that as there is a similar geographical area and it has 2/3 of their population, ergo we should need 2/3 of their council which would be an increase to 6/7 for Dublin alone, which would be something no one would reasonably advocate.

Colm Ó Súiligh, The system was inherited from the British and where the British version has gone through various changes over the years this one hasn’t.

I think we voted for them, maybe that’s where it is

Yea ‘we vote for dim’, then we sit on our backsides and let them do whatever they please. Democracy my arse!

hard to get motivated to fight every battle slap’stick. You doin much to bring em down yourself?

lack of accountability is shocking i agree