Directly elected mayors and council chairmen and chairwomen are to be given a new power to delay decisions of city and county managers, according to legislation to be published early next year.
The Local Government Reform Bill, the largest piece of local government legislation in the history of the State, may also allow these mayors and chairpersons to sit, but not vote, on interview boards for senior local authority posts.
The proposals are likely to add to discomfiture felt by city and county managers at the proposed reforms. However, while many managers are known to be uneasy about the planned changes, earlier this month their trade union, IMPACT, rejected suggestions that "they have expressed or implied any opposition to a new method for the election of mayors and chairpersons".
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, announced his intention to provide for the direct election of mayors and county council chairpersons last May as part of what he called the most radical shake-up of local government in the history of the State.
He initially suggested these directly elected representatives would serve two-year terms, but earlier this month said they would serve five years, the same term as the local authorities themselves.
In a new development it has emerged that the powers of these directly elected mayors and chairpersons will include the right to direct city and county managers not to proceed with a certain action until the council has met to discuss it first.
However, while the new proposal would allow the mayor to force consultation on a manager, it does not oblige the manager to change decisions in the face of opposition from the council. At the moment councils can only direct a manager to take action or reverse actions already taken through a "Section Four" motion which requires a three-quarters majority, and this would not change under the new Bill.
The new legislation will not fundamentally alter the present balance of power within local authorities, which sees full-time officials making most day-to-day decisions, including most decisions on major planning applications, with the elected members having very limited powers.
However, the new mayors and chairpersons will have their authority boosted significantly by virtue of being directly elected, and will have considerably more influence through serving a full five years in office as opposed to the present one-year term.
The new legislation will also give a somewhat enhanced role to the mayors and chairpersons, allowing them to request and obtain reports from their managers, and giving them a direct role in overseeing ethics in public office provisions as they affect the manager and staff.
Mr Dempsey yesterday declined to comment on the specific new powers to be given to the new mayors and chairpersons, but he suggested that he did not believe substantial new powers were needed in order to improve the status of elected representatives.
"You don't have to have a huge range of new powers," he said. "The representative role and the moral authority of being directly elected for five years will in itself give enhanced status not just to the mayor or chairperson but to all elected members."
He said that in New Zealand directly elected mayors had been introduced. Although they were purely representative with no extra powers, the system had proved "hugely successful", he said.
The new Bill will also end the "dual mandate" of local authority members, meaning that from the next local government election due in 2004 councillors cannot also be Oireachtas members. The first direct elections for mayor and chairperson positions will also take place in 2004.
The Bill will also provide for the payment of a salary to councillors fixed at a proportion of a senator's salary. That proportion is expected to be between 25 and 33 per cent, giving a monetary payment of £6,000 to £8,000. Once the legislation is passed, the remuneration of councillors is likely to begin during the present local authority term, according to Government sources.
The Local Government Reform Bill will be a particularly large piece of legislation, as it is intended to subsume a wide range of legislation on local government, some of it dating from the last century, into one Act of the Oireachtas. While it is expected to be published within the next two months, it is unlikely to have passed through the Oireachtas before 2001.