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In the hot seat

Thursday, 29 May 2008

The next cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council faces a number of difficult challenges in the year ahead, not least in trying to diffuse the deepening mistrust between councillors on either side of the county.
When the county council convenes its annual general meeting in the first week in June, Sandyford based councillor Tom Joyce (FG) will be elected as the new head of the local authority.
Cllr Joyce was co-opted onto the council in 2003 to fill the seat vacated by Dublin South Fine Gael TD, Olivia Mitchell.
As Fine Gael and Labour effectively control the council due to their majority of elected members, the parties have worked out a rotation system whereby each one elects a council chairman every second year.
The Fine Gael group recently selected Cllr Joyce as cathaoirleach after he beat councillors Donal Marren and Marie Baker in a secret ballot.
His background as a company director in his family run engineering firm TLM, based in Ringsend, should give him plenty of valuable experience in delegating complicated council matters.
However, Mr Joyce may face one of the most difficult years as chairman because of the likelihood of a substantial budget deficit this year, the new development plan process and the deepening rift between councillors in Dundrum and Dún Laoghaire.
In addition, the new cathaoirleach will have to rein in councillors who will doubtless be engaged in strategic posturing with a view to getting themselves re-elected in next year’s local elections.
In recent years and particularly over the last 12 months, elected members from both sides of the county have become increasingly engaged in bickering over divisive issues such as clamping and commercial rates.
Councillors in Dundrum believe the rates collected from their more prosperous town is effectively subsidising the other side of the county and an ailing Dún Laoghaire, which was recently described by the last Cathaoirleach as “dying on its feet” and being a “ghost town at night”.
Speaking to Southside People, Cllr Joyce said the underlying tension between councillors on both sides was one of the issues which he hoped to tackle during his upcoming tenure.
“It is easy to make fun of certain sides or certain issues or whatever, but then things become more ingrained and it is something that I would like to go some way towards trying to heal,” he said.
“We will talk to all sides and try as much as possible to get each side to respect each other’s point of view. Both arguments are valid to a certain extent. But when we go off on complete tangents and personal attacks on whole communities, although it is funny to read it is not going to get us anywhere.”
Difficulties
He added: “So I am going to try to avoid that kind of thing and get people to realise that while they are elected to one particular ward, they represent the whole county.”
He acknowledged that the current batch of county councillors often seem to have difficulties getting through their agendas efficiently, as they frequently get bogged down on certain issues.
Cllr Joyce said this was also an issue he would like to rectify over the next year in an attempt to streamline council business.
“There are a lot of lessons that could be learned from the way things are done in Dundrum, in that it is less adversarial,” he continued. “If we could get to a situation where it is more business like and people actually relish making decisions and pushing things forward, I would consider that to be a great success.”
He will also have to try to skillfully manage the fall out that will inevitably arise as a result of the significant losses the council faces this year due to falling development levies and in revenue lost to private waste operators.
“I presume come December, when we begin to see the figures from the income from the waste management and the development levies, it is going to have a severely negative effect on the council’s ability to balance its budget,” he said.
“So that is obviously going to be another challenge I am going to face as cathaoirleach.”
He added that he is looking forward to getting on top of his brief in terms of attempting to deal efficiently with council business as far as the drafting of the new county development plan is concerned.

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