Fine Gael is preparing proposals for fewer TDs and more power for local councillors as part of a radical reform platform for next year's local government elections.
The party leader, Mr Enda Kenny, said yesterday that county managers, county enterprise boards and the National Roads Authority were among service-providers who currently had "no real answerability". Fine Gael's proposals would be designed to make those delivering public services accountable to the public for their actions.
Mr Kenny has set up a series of internal policy workshops in an attempt to rebuild his party's fortunes after last year's disastrous general election result. He told The Irish Times yesterday that, with 68 weeks to go before next year's local and European elections, he had a sense of urgency about the project.
The Dáil should be reduced in size and should deal solely with policy, legislation and budgetary matters. He did not have a particular number of TDs in mind at this point.
Local authorities should have enhanced power and responsibility for delivering a range of services currently delivered by unaccountable agencies. "We are working on proposals to devolve such things from national level to local level," he said. "Power should be devolved down as close as possible to the people, so that there is political answerability."
Mr Kenny likened many State agencies to unaccountable, self-perpetuating bureaucracies. When faced, as they were now, with having to make financial cuts, the non-pay elements appeared to go first, leaving behind a group of unaccountable people delivering reduced services without being answerable to anyone.
"There are huge numbers of people disaffected by politics," he said. At the same time, there were "so many people involved in the delivery of services who are not answerable to anyone". He believed that his party could attract support by making it clear that it stood for "radical reform" of how decisions were made and how services were provided.
Many of those who called to a TD's constituency clinic about a housing issue were also drawing social welfare payments from another arm of the State and receiving a medical card from yet another. "I want effective local government reform to ensure that they will be dealt with by one single entity," he said. The details of these proposals would be worked out in the coming year.
Mr Kenny said that his party had a good working relationship with the Labour Party; they had co-operated on a number of recent Dáil motions and would continue to do so. But he said that his focus was on policy initiatives which would define Fine Gael's ethos.
He hoped that these would give the party a platform on which it would make gains in next year's local government and European elections and that those elections, in turn, would provided a stepping-stone to success in the next general election.