Post-election, a group of Fingal county councillors have formed a ruling alliance – but what are their policy goals?

On Friday, councillors from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Green Party voted together to choose the lord mayor of Fingal County Council.

While this vote was formally to choose who’d wear the chains of office for the next 12 months, it was also a proxy for deciding what constellation of parties would lead the council for the next five years, setting agendas, and divvying up committee chairs.

Sinn Féin and Social Democrats councillors had tried to round up enough votes to compete with this bloc, but hadn’t managed to get the numbers.

This echoed the process in neighbouring Dublin City Council, which was running in parallel.

In the city too, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Greens gathered the most votes and got to choose the mayor and committee chairs.

In the city too, the Social Democrats and Sinn Féin led an effort to bring together a competing bloc, but didn’t find enough votes.

A difference though, is that while in the city there was public disagreement between the two blocs on policy – on whether to raise the local property tax, in particular – in Fingal there wasn’t.

Forming coalitions

On Dublin City Council, each bloc sent out an overview of its proposed policy approach to leading the city council during the five-year term until the next local elections. In Fingal, only one side did.

When Labour Councillor Mary McCamley nominated her party colleague Brian McDonagh to become lord mayor for the first year of this new council term, she spoke about his personal qualities.

“Brian is a highly intelligent person, and in my opinion is considerate of others in the chamber,” McCamley said. “He has contributed greatly to all of the debates in this chamber, over the past while and I’ve no doubt he will be fair in all his dealings.”

When Social Democrats Councillor Paul Mulville nominated Independents4Change Councillor Dean Mulligan for lord mayor, he focused on Mulligan’s political activism and priorities.

“He’s a tireless campaigner, inside the council chamber and on the streets fighting for equality, fairness, and a better society for all, with a strong belief that community participation and engagement must be at the core of all good political decision-making”, Mulville said.

The alliance backing Mulligan as lord mayor also released a document explaining how they intended to lead the council, and what policy directions they planned to pursue.

Some parts of it say, in broad strokes, what the parties believe. Others are more detailed.

For example, “Amend [the council’s] standing orders to make a report on social housing a recurring item at every Council meeting which will list the current number of vacant ‘void’ social homes, the number of new social homes in construction, the number in planning, the current number being leased, and the remaining budget for the year.”

Or, “Ensure the Residential Zoned Land Tax (RZLT) and Vacant Homes Tax is enforced at Council level.”

Or “Ensure that planning permission for new data centres are refused, on climate and electricity consumption grounds, inline with the 2022 government policy statement that defines the greater Dublin area as a “constrained region”.

The document goes on for 12 pages. “We wanted to be part of a ruling group that would be open and transparent about our policies,” Mulville said by phone.

At the meeting on Friday, McDonagh got 23 votes, a majority on the 40-seat council.

The bloc backing him included the biggest parties on the council, Fine Gael (7 seats), Labour (7 seats), Fianna Fáil (6 seats), and the one Green councillor, says Labour Councillor John Walsh.

The two Aontú councillors – who are not part of the pact, Walsh says – voted for McDonagh too, as did two independents.

This was a change from the last council term, when Fine Gael wasn’t involved in the leading bloc, and the Greens – who then had five councillors – were a bigger part. But with the election earlier this month, the Greens lost most of their seats in Fingal.

On Friday, Mulligan got 11 votes in his bid to become lord mayor: from Sinn Féin, which has four seats on the council, the Social Democrats (2), People Before Profit (2), and two independents.

The ruling coalition on Friday also elected Fianna Fáil Councillor John-Kingsley Onwumereh as deputy mayor of Fingal County Council.

Labour’s choice

Labour had talked to the opposition group about joining them, instead of the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael group, Labour Councillor John Walsh said in a statement Monday.

“The Labour Group was very interested in a progressive alliance and held exploratory discussions to find out whether this was viable in securing a stable majority,” he said.

“These failed for two reasons 1) there were not sufficient Councillors willing to support a progressive alliance of 20 including the Labour Party and 2) one group on the Council indicated through intermediaries they were willing to support a Labour Mayor, but this could depend on who we put forward. This was a bizarre and unacceptable precondition in any negotiation,” he said.

The local property tax was also an obstacle to Labour joining that group, said Walsh, the Labour councillor, by phone on Tuesday.

Part of Labour’s core policy agenda in Fingal is ensuring that tax is set at a high enough rate to not only maintain services but improve them, he said.

The government sets the tax at a base rate, and councillors can vote to vary that up by 15 percent, bringing in more revenue that can be used for services, or down by 15 percent, saving homeowners money.

Fingal councillors voted to vary it downwards by 7.5 percent for 2023 and 2024. Walsh said Labour doesn’t want to see it go any lower than that, but other parties want it to.

The leader of the Sinn Féin group on Fingal County Council, Councillor Angela Donnelly, said in a statement on Sunday that they were disappointed that Labour had chosen not to join their bloc.

“We had an opportunity to agree a policy-led ruling arrangement between Labour, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, Solidarity/People before Profit, the Green Party, Independents for Change and a number of progressive independents that was transparent and outlined the division of chairs and committee roles from the beginning of the Council term,” Donnelly said.

“Had this been achieved, it would have been the first time any policy led, transparent agreement had ever been agreed by councillors on Fingal County Council,” she said.

Mulville, the Social Democrats councillor, said in a statement that: “For over 30 years on Fingal County Council, these ‘Control groups’ have been a mix of Fine Gael/ Labour/ Fianna Fáil, & sometimes Greens or Independents, never revealing their Governing Agreement for public scrutiny,” he said.

Why no policy document?

On Monday, asked about how the opposition bloc had a policy platform, Fianna Fáil Councillor Darrragh Butler said, “Yeah, it’s not a bad idea.”

“Last time there was a loose document floating around,” Butler said.

But it’s hard to put together a policy platform over the two weeks between the election and the first meeting of the new council, he said.

Councillors have to wrap up their campaigns, doing things like taking down their signs – and they might want to take a little break too, as Butler did.

There’s no agreement among the parties involved in the ruling bloc this time on what to do about the local property tax, Butler said.

The main thing, Butler said, is “you have to look to responsible parties that will commit to a five-year pact, commit to passing a budget, and running the council”.

“You have to work with people who will do what’s right rather than what looks good on election posters,” he said.

Walsh, the Labour councillor, said on Tuesday that his party group on the council “has detailed policy objectives and we’ll put them out in the next few days”.

In addition to its position on local property tax, Labour’s “core policy agenda” in Fingal includes a “much stronger focus on building homes, particularly more social and affordable homes”, Walsh said.

Also, Labour wants to see “further major investment in community centres” in Fingal, Walsh said.

Why doesn’t Fingal’s ruling group as a whole have a joint policy platform? A ruling group on a council is not like a coalition in the Dáil, Walsh said.

“It’s very different – it’s forming a majority to ensure that the council can function, a budget is passed and there’s investment in public services,” he said.

The councillors don’t have executive functions, like ministers in government, Walsh said. That kind of power rests with the council’s chief executive, and council managers, he said.

And parties in the ruling group can work with parties that aren’t in it to achieve their goals – without fear of the government falling or anything like that, Walsh said.

“We’ll work with parties within the pact and also potentially ones not it,” Walsh said. “We were absolutely open to working with Sinn Féin.”

So is there no joint policy platform because the parties that are part of the ruling bloc can’t agree one?

“There are significant differences between Labour and the government parties, but we are working with them in a constructive way,” Walsh said.

Choosing chairs

On Monday, the council met again, to divvy up positions, everything from who would serve on the Fingal Age Friendly Alliance Committee and the Dublin North East Drug and Alcohol Task Force, to who would chair the council’s strategic policy committees (SPCs).

These policy committees meet to discuss issues like housing, planning, transport, and climate action. A council spokesperson said in March that media were no longer allowed to attend meetings of these strategic policy committees.

In any case, in addition to chairing their strategic policy committees, the SPC chairs form a kind of executive committee representing the elected councillors in discussions with the chief executive of the council – so these are key appointments.

At the start of the meeting on Monday, the new lord mayor, Labour Councillor Brian McDonagh, said that there were only 35 of 40 councillors present so he wanted to shuffle the agenda so the election of the SPC chairs would happen later in the meeting.

“I think that we will have an additional member at the meeting and I think that that will give, particularly for those key appointments, I think it’ll give, a greater reflection of the council,” he said.

Well, if the votes can be put off until later in the meeting for someone who can’t make it on time, why can’t they be put off until another day altogether to accommodate councillors who couldn’t make it at all on Monday, asked independent Councillor Joe Newman, who had voted on Friday for mayor with the opposition bloc.

The next council meeting isn’t until early July, said McDonagh, the lord mayor. “We want to appoint the strategic policy group, on the advice of the chief executive, because we want to start discussing budgetary matters and other matters that we prefer not to leave till [8 July].”

Independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin, who abstained from voting for the mayor on Friday, criticised this proposal by McDonagh to shuffle the agenda.

“To facilitate the ruling party waiting on one member to arrive is not a fair way to deal with it because it’s just purely taking a decision to manipulate a vote when the numbers are correct,” Guerin said.

But Fine Gael Councillor Kieran Dennison said he didn’t see the problem. “If you, mayor, want to vary this agenda to reflect the numbers that are here, I think that’s fine,” he said.

The council voted 23 to 12 to back McDonagh’s proposal to shuffle the agenda.

Two hours later on in the same meeting on Monday, they moved on to elect the SPC chairs.

The opposition group nominated independent Councillor Joe Newman to chair one of the SPCs, and then Mulville, the Social Democrats councillor, clarified that actually, they had an agreement that Newman would serve for the first two and a half years, and Social Democrats Councillor Joan Hopkins would take his place for the second.

“I would request if the ruling group would publish the ruling group’s agreement for public scrutiny, so we can see exactly what’s been agreed in terms of nominations and who’s going to be mayor what year,” Mulville said.

“And whether there’s any policy basis or any strategic agreement around policy priorities for the ruling group, I think that should be published and made public,” he said.

Solidarity Councillor John Burtchaell backed him up.

But no one from the ruling group responded, and McDonagh, the mayor, moved the meeting on. “Sorry we’re just speaking on the nomination.”

By the end of the meeting, the council had chosen as SPC chairs Newman, Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly, Fianna Fáil Councillor Eoghan O’Brien, Fianna Fáil Councillor Darragh Butler, Fine Gael Councillor Kieran Dennison, Fine Gael Councillor Eoghan Dockerell, and Labour Councillor Robert O’Donoghue.

The council has not yet decided what subjects each of its SPCs is going to cover, or which of these councillors will chair which one.