Why aren’t Dublin councillors harder on council managers? a reader asked

Why aren’t Dublin councillors harder on council managers? a reader wanted to know, in response to our survey asking what issues they wanted to hear about from candidates standing for the local elections in June.

After all, the elected councillors are charged with overseeing the work of the council, everything from cleaning streets, to managing council housing, to trimming trees, to issuing tenders for companies to provide services like parking enforcement or public toilets.

“Councillors have responsibility for: Scrutinising the performance of local authorities against the priorities and targets set,” says a guide to the role of councillors, from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

This scrutiny is often done in the monthly public meetings of all the elected members of the council. Or at meetings of their local area committees, or policy committees focusing on areas like housing or the arts.

The thing is, though, councillors also have another role: representing people who come to them with problems they need help with. This often involves working behind the scenes with council staff members to help constituents access council services.

While they all said they’d never hesitated to hold council managers to account when necessary, several current and former Dublin city councillors also said their need to work behind the scenes with council staff to help constituents keeps them cordial.

“Obviously if you argue with an official, embarrass them at a meeting, that doesn’t bode well,” says Fianna Fáil Councillor Keith Connolly.

“I think sometimes the need to have an ongoing relationship with people ensures people are more measured and civil in their criticism,” says Green Party Councillor Michael Pidgeon.

“There is a tension between trying to hold someone to account and trying to have a working relationship with them,” says former Social Democrats Councillor Karl Stanley.

“You can see that they [council managers] can [be] more favorable to the ones who ‘play ball’ with them,” says People Before Profit Councillor Hazel de Nortúin.

Liam Kenny, director of the Association of Irish Local Government (AILG), which represents local councillors, says this is an “inherent and inevitable tension in the reality of a councillors role”.

In response to a query about whether council staff would ever seek something in exchange for helping a councillor with a constituent’s problem – for example, silence on a particular issue at a meeting, a council spokesperson said that’d be against the rules.

“The role of all employees of Dublin City Council is to assist our Citizens in accessing services,” the spokesperson said. “To seek something in return is completely against all codes of conduct, ethics and public sector values and duty.”

Different approaches

Councillors’ oversight role includes things like scrutinising annual accounts, considering planning applications from the council for its own parks or housing or other projects, and deciding on council proposals to sell off land.

Actually holding council staff to account for shortcomings can be difficult, says Stanley, the former Social Democrats councillor.

“The executive managers are absolutely excellent at deflecting,” says Stanley. “In Dublin City Council one of the things that’s needed to succeed and rise up the ranks is the ability in a non-confrontational way to make sure the blame doesn’t stick to you.”

Councillors’ role representing constituents might involve representing individuals, or residents associations, or sports teams, current and former councillors said.

These constituents might want to get maintenance done in council housing, to get double-yellow lines painted on streets, to get trees trimmed, to get illegal dumping cleaned up, to get a new pitch or changing room.

Different councillors said they had different approaches to balancing the need to oversee council staff and, at times, hold them to account for shortcomings, and the need to perhaps ask that staff member for help behind the scenes.

Asked about the tension between a councillor’s oversight role and their representation role, independent Councillor Mannix Flynn said, “That’s bullshit.”

“Your role as a councillor is very clear: it’s governance, and it’s to hold the executive to account,” Flynn said. “Representing individual constituents is secondary to the oversight role.”

If council staff were to take offence when he holds them to account at public meetings, and become reluctant to help when he goes to them about individual constituents’ needs, “I’ll bring down consequences on them,” Flynn says.

In contrast, Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, said he starts off by working in the background, asking questions, trying to solve problems.

But if a council staff member misleads him, or doesn’t give him an answer, or doesn’t make progress on fixing an issue, he might go public, he said.

“There are officials who don’t respect councillors and their role and don’t get back to them on time,” he said. “That’s something we have to address.”

Says the council spokesperson: “The role of a Councillor is to represent their constituents and this is understood and respected by all employees of Dublin City Council.”

Former People Before Profit Councillor Tina MacVeigh says there’s a tension built into the system, but “tension in that sense doesn’t necessarily mean conflict”.

“It certainly does present a challenge, but I never let it hold me back,” MacVeigh said.

Building relationships with council staff members helps make it easier to navigate those times when things get tricky, too, she said. What does that involve, remembering their birthday and sending a card?

“No,” MacVeigh laughs. “Respecting where everyone’s coming from: they have a job to do and so do I.”

“Do you have to have a bit of a barney with them sometimes? Yeah but do it with a degree of cordiality,” she said.

MacVeigh said she’d never felt like when she stood up and took a firmer line on an issue in public, council officials withdrew from helping her help her constituents – or even just bumped her down the list of which councillors to help.

Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor, said that if a councillor is seen as generally reasonable and civil, then when they do raise an issue in a stronger way council staff take that more seriously.

“You want collegial relations, but also want to say when it’s not good enough,” he said. “I am sure some people hold back from criticism but I don’t think I’ve faced any consequences for criticising council officials.”

Gilliland, the Labour councillor, said her way of working is “to work with officials to co-create solutions”.

“I don’t believe it is my role to publicly bash Dublin City Council because I have found something in the system that is not working well,” she says.

“My first raising of it would not be berating in public but going in private to find a solution,” she said. “Maybe some councillors want to call on officials to fix problems. I want to bring my knowledge and experience to help them fix it.”

Stanley, the Social Democrats councillor, said, “There might be more votes in standing up and waving your arms and screaming and shouting but that’s not the way to get things done.”

The council spokesperson said that, “Generally there is a good collaborative working relationship between the officials and the elected members.”

They all “have good public service values and an objective of working together to provide good public services for the Citizens at the centre of what they do”, the spokesperson said.

“Naturally, there are times where the views of both parties are not always aligned and this can result in good robust debate, sometimes resulting in the re-working of policy or altering a programme of work,” they said.

Representing constituents

Councillors hear from local residents all the time, day and night, weekends and holidays.

Often individuals bring them one-off, individual issues – which the councillor might go to council staff to try to solve, often starting at a local council office.

“The system is very straight, there’s not really a quid pro quo,” says Stanley, the former Social Democrats councillor.

Flynn, the independent councillor, says he sees it differently: what the councillor has to offer council staff is less public criticism, more public praise, or more public silence.

Either way, it is very often necessary for councillors who want something done to be very persistent, current and former councillors say.

“I’ve been hammering on about the vacant houses and it’s just constantly pushing them to follow up on the same actions over and over,” says de Nortúin, the People Before Profit councillor.

Says Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor: “Really the power that councillors have is hassle.”

In all of this, councillors have to be careful navigating office politics, said de Nortúin, the People Before Profit councillor.

If council staff in a local office aren’t getting something done, and you go over their head to council higher-ups in town, that can ruffle feathers.

“The local office can get really pissed off and take it personal – where if they had just done the work, you wouldn’t have to,” she said.

Councillors are sometimes used for leverage in internal council office politics, too.

Council managers can sometimes find it useful to ask councillors to publicly call out a particular department or section of the council that isn’t performing, said Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor.

Another role councillors often play is as a conduit for information, letting residents know what the council is planning, and conveying feedback from local residents back to council staff.

“Councillors are on the ground they know what the issues are,” says Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor. “Local knowledge is priceless.”

“We have a lot of local knowledge they find useful. We’re the ones on the ground,” says MacVeigh, the former People Before Profit councillor.

Working within the council system can present particular challenges for women councillors, as is the case with many workplaces, say current and former councillors.

“Certainly the informal, clubby nature helps some men, more than it helps women,” says Pidgeon, the Green Party councillor.

Says de Nortúin: “I think that’s very much pushed on women councillors to stop complaining.”

At the end of last year, 62 percent of the council’s senior managers were men, and 38 percent were women, according to council figures.

Working the system

Sometimes issues aren’t one-offs, but keep cropping up again and again and again.

Being able to see that is one of the benefits of the councillor’s role in representing individual constituents, says Kenny, the director of the AILG.

“We would maintain that this role – sometimes dismissed as ‘clientelism’ – informs councillors as to the realities on the ground and thus informs their approach to their policy making role,” he said.

“For example, if a councillor begins to get numerous contacts about, say, broken public lights then he/she knows that at a policy level more funds need to be provided next year for public lighting when Int comes to approving the annual budget,” he said.

If an issue coming up repeatedly points to a problem with council policies, councillors can raise that with council staff too.

If the council isn’t able to change the way it’s doing something, because it’s bound by legislation, different councillors have different abilities to help, says Stanley, the former Social Democrats councillor.

For example, if a councillor wants the council to take back control of the bin-collection service, that would take national legislation.

A member of an opposition party could ask their party TDs or senators to raise the issue in the Oireachtas, and try to progress it that way.

But a member of a government party could conceivably work with their party colleagues to get that change into a programme for government. Several councillors are directly involved in national government, as they serve as parliamentary assistants to TDs.

An independent councillor might be entirely on their own – or they might have links to an independent TD or TDs, who could help push for change at the national level.

Stanley, the former Social Democrats councillor, says that “people who put themselves forward for a councillor position are weirdos – and I include myself in that group”.

Dublin Inquirer’s 2024 election guide shows 183 people vying for seats on Dublin City Council or Fingal County Council – and there are probably more.