REACTION:THERE WAS a broadly positive response by business leaders, politicians and local authority managers to the local government reforms proposed yesterday.
Chambers Ireland said it welcomed the report of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group, commenting that a quick implementation of the recommendations could result in “much needed savings”.
Chambers spokeswoman Hilary Haydon said restructuring provided “a real opportunity to introduce new and more efficient ways of providing local services”.
She said business had been the funder of “last resort” for many local authorities, and it followed “that a significant amount of the cost savings achieved must be passed back to businesses in the form of reduced rates and other charges”.
The City and County Managers’ Association also welcomed the report, remarking that it could be seen “as a blueprint for the way ahead”.
According to association chairman and Limerick County manager Ned Gleeson, considerable progress has been made in recent years in reducing expenditure and staff numbers. He said reductions of €300 million have been achieved in the last two years and 5,000 staff across all grades, including management levels, have left the local authority service.
“We note the views of the group in relation to further reductions in staffing levels. We are not aware at this point of the basis for these figures, but it is the job of local managers to get it right,” he said.
Fine Gael’s environment spokesman Phil Hogan said: “Many of the report’s recommendations have already been set out in our own detailed policy . . . published last year.”
He said Fine Gael believed it was necessary to devolve power from central government to local government, “and ensure that we have an accountable and robust system of local government that gives the maximum opportunity for implementation of policy and services as close as possible to the citizen”.
However party transport spokesman Simon Coveney was critical of longer-term proposals to toll national roads, remarking they made “no sense”.
But Government sources played down the inclusion of tolled national routes and insisted they were a longer-term recommendation in the plan.
