Carving up Dublin

Following on from the review of Dáil boundaries last year, a committee has been set up to redraw county and city council wards. They accepted public submissions during January and here is the one I wrote. It wasn't as detailed as I wished as I ended up rushing it in the last couple of days while travelling to and from Brussels.

Under-representation

With an increase in representation from 52 to 63 councillors, each councillor will now represent 8375 residents, based on the latest population figures from the CSO. Despite the improvment since the last review, this still leaves Dubliners under-represented by almost 43% compared to the rest of the country. If the figure used in other councils was applied to Dublin, there would be 109 councillors for the City. This would allow the committee to provide real local representation by creating smaller geographical wards, not sprawling semi-Dáil constituencies that it is now forced to do.

General Principles

I note in the terms of reference that wards are to return between 6 and 10 members. This is a very welcome requirement. For proportionality’s sake, it is important to move away from 3 and 4 seaters. Indeed my submission to the Dáil boundary review proposed a scenario where most TDs were returned in 5 seaters.

The second important principle in drawing boundaries is to try to keep natural communities in a single ward. In the current arrangement urban villages like Terenure, Raheny and Sandymount are split across two different wards and this is less than satisfactory. However, given the often competing pressure to define clear boundaries following main roads, rivers, railways etc. it is probably not possible to adhere to this principle at all times.

The final principle is that, where possible, Council and Dáil boundaries should coincide. Again, it is not possible to satisfy this constraint at all times.

South Side

The population in the City area south of the river Liffey is approximately 220k. This suggests a representation level of 26 councillors. Looking first at the new Dublin Bay South (DBS) constituency, the population there is almost perfect for 14 councillors so I propose the creation of two wards entirely contained within that Dáil constituency, each of 7 seats. Drawing a border that follows the canal from Harold’s Cross to Leeson St and then along the N11 to the Council boundary with Dún Laoghaire, creates two wards as required. These are effectively a merge of the old Pembroke and South East Inner City wards (Pembroke) and old Rathmines merged with the areas of Terenure and Harold’s Cross that were recently moved from Dublin South Central (Rathmines). 

The remainder of the south side all lies within the Dáil constituency of Dublin South Central (DSC). I have also included the part of DSC that lies north of the river along Parkgate St and Conyngham Road. This population merits 12 councillors and so I propose creating two wards of 6 seats. This division is not as simple as the one for DBS. The difficulty stems from the fact that the Merchants Quay and Ushers DEDs are far more densely populated than the outer suburban areas. I have tried various combinations of DEDs, none to any great satisfaction – one either ends up splitting the inner city or Crumlin, or else ends up with a sprawling outer ward that stretches from Chapelizod to the KCR. This boundary follows Thomas St, Marrowbone Lane, LUAS tracks, the Camac and finally Walkinstown Rd to the roundabout. The eastern part I call Crumlin and the western part Ballyfermot.

North Side

Moving across the river, there are 37 council seats to be allocated. The area is covered by 4 Dáil constituencies, Dublin Central (DC), Dublin West (DW), Dublin North West (DNW) and the new Dublin Bay North (DBN) with only DC entirely within the City Council area.

Starting with DC, the population merits a total of over 10 councillors. If one removes the Cabra DEDs, one is left with a Central ward with population requiring 8 councillors. DBN’s population entitles it to be represented by 15 councillors. Previous local divisions have split the village of Raheny, so I propose instead to divide the constituency in half using the Malahide Road, a natural boundary, with the eastern portion (Raheny) allocated 8 councillors and the western (Beaumont) awarded 7.

DNW has recently been extended to include the Botanic DEDs as well as Drumcondra South C. If these areas are excluded, the remaining territory has exactly the right population for an 8 seat (Finglas) ward. The remaining areas, namely Cabra from DC, Botanic and Drumcondra from DNW and the Ashtown & Phoenix Park areas in DW can be merged into a single 6 seater (Cabra).

Map

The map below shows the arrangement of the wards as outlined above. The names are not to be taken as definitive in any sense. Finglas could just as easily be called Ballymun and Ballyfermot could be Inchicore. Final place names should probably be agreed by the committee in consultation with the existing public representative from the area concerned.

Ward Summary

Ward	Population	Seats	Pop/Seat	Variance
Pembroke	61444	7	8778	4.81%
Rathmines	54952	7	7850	-6.26%
Crumlin	53235	6	8873	5.94%
Ballyfermot	51272	6	8845	2.04%
Raheny	71590	8	8949	6.85%
Beaumont	55533	7	7933	-5.27%
Central	65783	8	8223	-1.81%
Finglas	67037	8	8380	0.06%
Cabra	46766	6	7794	-6.93%

Big Phil's latest missed opportunity

I was recently watching an old episodes of Yes, Prime Minister where the topic of local government reform came up. Hacker initially thinks that it is a great idea, Sir Humphrey obviously takes the opposite point of view. Add a militant socialist councillor and the usual confusion from Bernard and by the end of it Hacker is bamboozled into reversing his position. (Full recap here.). After today's announcement of Local Government reform by Phil Hogan, one has to wonder if a similar scene has played out over the last year or so in the Custom House.

After years of neglect, cuts in funding, cuts in services and cuts in power held by locally elected representatives, local government in Ireland was prime for transformation. Similar to how Telecom Eireann skipped about 3 generations of technology in their modernisation in the late 80s and early 90s, we could have catapulted Ireland's local government regime to the top of the class. We could have skipped various failed models tried in other countries and built a best-of-breed system fit for the 21st Century - local issues being decided by local reps and paid for by locally raised taxes.

Instead we see a continued assault on local democracy in the name of "savings". Sure we currently have too many county, borough and town councils for the activities that they are permitted to carry out. But is putting more and more of that power into the hands of unelected and unaccountable officials in the councils or the Department of Environment really a good idea? We have only recently seen the mess the officials have made of waste in Dublin with both the incinerator and the Greyhound privatization despite the countless votes against both actions by the elected representatives.

In my ideal world local government should have responsibility for the following

• Commercial and Domestic Waste - service can be part or fully privatized but the terms should be set locally
• Mains and Waste Water - collective operations with neighbouring councils for economies of scale
• Primary and Secondary Education - how many, what size, where and what ethos (or preferably secular)
• Community Policing - big ticket items like fraud, drugs, murders etc dealt with nationally but local authority should be able to "purchase" additional policing above a base line
• Zoning - drawing up the development plan for the county/city but then leaving the individual planning to the professionals under a certain threshold
• Local taxation - property, sales, hotel bed whatever. Local funds raised from local community

One good proposal is the power for each local authority to set property taxes in their area. However, we still have to see if the property taxes raised will actually flow in full to the authority in which they are raised. I am still dubious that there won't be a transfer from urban to rural to ensure the continuation of a library in Clare or a fire service in Leitrim. Secondly, no timescale for this devolution has been given - this is a matter for government according to the Minister. But isn't he part of the government? Couldn't he have included a timetable in his major announcement today?

On a practical note, when you exclude the town/borough councillors, the number of councillors will actually increase from 883 to 950. Assuming that there is some rebalancing of councillor numbers in line with population, it means that Dublin City Council is likely to increase in number from the current 52 to somewhere around 70 members, with similar increases in the other Dublin councils. From a very parochial point of view, it means the extended Dublin South East (sorry Bay South) is likely to now return 12 and so we could see the formation of two 6-seaters or three 4-seaters.

Old park, new name?

Dublin City Council have been taking submissions on the proposal to rename the park in Merrion Square to something other than Archbishop Ryan park. Way back when, the Catholic Church had hoped to build a new cathedral in the square but when that failed to come about, the then Archbishop of Dublin donated the land to the city and they named it after him. To most Dubliners the place is just known as Merrion Square and I would say very few know the official name of the park. I only learned of its title in 2007 when I was reading the report of a Dublin City Council meeting where it was mentioned and I had resort to Google to find out what they were talking about.

However, after the recent revelations about Archbishop Ryan's action (or inaction) in the child abuse scandals there has been a groundswell of support for changing the name of the park. Of course the usual knee-jerk suggestions of "Abuse Park" and "Child Rape Memorial Park" have been bandied about. More useful suggestions such as "The Children's Park", "James Joyce Park" and "Oscar Wilde Park" have also been proposed.

To my mind too much emphasis is placed on the literary and artistic in Ireland and not enough on our scientific achievements. Therefore my short submission to the Council is to name the park after either Ernest Walton, the first man to split the atom and Ireland's only Physics Nobel Laureate, or William Rowan Hamilton who invented Quaternions and what we now call Hamiltonian Mechanics. While I doubt my suggestion will be the one eventually chosen, someone has to stick up for the nerds and geeks.

Dublin stays slow

I watched last night's meeting of Dublin City Council on their streaming webcast where the 30km/h zone was up for debate again. On the table was an FG motion to scrap the zone. In response to this Cllrs Montague and Lacey put down an amendment that would have changed the area of the zone as outlined in a previous post.

To say that the councillors overall behaved like a bold 2nd or 3rd class in national school would not be understating it. Personal attacks, shouting each other down, repeating the point previously made, collectively they would have been kicked out of the Irish Times debating competition for lack of courtesy. To be fair to the Lord Mayor, she did her best to control the situation but at times, if I had been her, I would have called a halt to proceedings or started ejecting people from the chamber. I wonder if that is within her power at a meeting.

At the end of the day two votes were held. The first, to amend the motion to the Labour proposed compromise was passed but did not get the 66% support required. The second vote was on the original FG proposal and was heavily defeated 28 to 12. So the upshot is that the full 30km/h zone will be left as is. It will come up for review after 6 months of operation as was agreed when initially implemented but presumably any proposed changes will have to go to public consultation and then another vote of the City Council so is unlikely to come into effect in 2010.

Dublin Speed Up?

Following on from a recent post on the new speed limit in the city centre, the Traffic Committee this evening have voted to modify the area affected by the new limit. The 50k limit will be restored to Winetavern St, Kildare St and the quays except between Capel St and O'Connell St. This proposal will be taken to the full council at the March meeting. If accepted there, it will probably be about 6 months before the new bylaw will come into effect.

I've almost come around to the view that this compromise is acceptable. The alternative position is the FG plan to return the 30k zone to what was in place in January with all the main routes in the city centre going back to 50k. While part of me feels that after a few months in operation the 30k zone would just become accepted as the norm, Falstaff did nail it with his "the better part of valour is discretion". Retaining most of the improvements at the cost of a couple of hundred metres of roadway is better than junking all of it.

Dublin slow down

From tomorrow morning a 30kph speed limit will apply around the centre of Dublin. It will be in affect 24 hours a day roughly between Gardiner St and Church St, and from Dorset St to Cuffe St. The main additions to the already existing 30kph zone are the quays, Dame St, George's St, Parnell St and O'Connell St as many of the side streets in this area are already have a reduced limit or are at least partially pedestrianised already.

Already the usual suspects are out moaning about this infringement to our civil liberty to drive our cars wherever we want at whatever speed we want. Of course, what they are forgetting is that between about 630 and 1900 every weekday it is impossible to get above an average speed of about 15kph in the city centre anyway. Add to this the need to drive extremely slowly on the quays and Dame St at night due to the large number of intoxicated pedestrians who randomly jump out in front of you and the massive number of taxis and it is clear that this new limit will barely affect driving times in town at all.

The policy of Dublin City Council towards private car traffic in central Dublin over the last few years is to be commended. They are trying to force a modal shift towards public transport, cycling and walking. Starting with small measures like no left turn from Dawson St on to Nassau St, the re-landscaping of O'Connell St, Busgate and now the reduced speed limit they are slowly but surely turning Dublin back into a living space rather than a glorified car park. Now it is up to central government to provide the required funding to complete the picture with the Interconnector, Metro North and retaining Dublin Bus services despite the economic down turn.

Cllr Forde jumps ship

Like the Government with TDs, Sinn Féin aren't having the best of luck with their councillors on Dublin City Council. Seven councillors were returned for them at the June elections but after this weekend's announcement that Killian Forde from Donaghmede has left the party they are down to four. He has followed in the footsteps of Louise Minihan (Ballyfermot) and Christy Burke (North Inner City). This isn't overly surprising when you consider that Forde was the Councillor who proposed the 2010 budget at the Council meeting before Christmas taking a position contrary to the other SF councillors.

To my mind this is just the latest sign of a continual downward trend of support for SF south of the border. First they lost Mary Lou McDonald as MEP in the Dublin Constituency. Now SF will argue that with the constituency going from four to three seats that they were always going to be the ones to loose out but this not true. With Eoin Ryan losing his seat and Joe Higgins taking one, it shows that there was a leftish, protest vote in the city and SF were not the party to attract it.

The story was the same in the local elections where nationally SF returned exactly the same number of councillors in spite of the continued collapse of the Fianna Fail vote and the gains of other left leaning groups like Labour and PBP. After June's elections, Toireasa Ferris came out and slammed the party leadership as being too Northern focused and that the party was not suitably set up to contest elections south of the border. She demanded a review of operations and priorities in the south but that seems to have been ignored by the Adams/McGuinness power block in the North.

So where to from here for Sinn Féin? If they continue on their current path the are facing a complete meltdown in the Republic. They are being torn between the traditional, 32 county republicans (mainly rural) and the left wing, community activists (mainly urban) and a jump to either one will loose the other to FF or Lab/PBP. While it would go against everything they stand for, they should separate the party into a Northern and Southern section and let someone like Ferris take over down here. If we have another general election with Adams turning up for leaders' debates and McDonald failing again in Dublin Central, then SF are a spent force this side of the border.

City Council plays Scrooge

Twas the week before Christmas and all throughout the city, those on lower incomes were exempt from paying for waste collection. But the nasty grinches up in the Council Chamber were about to put an end to that. Ok I think that's about all I can do in that style so plain English from here.

Last night, Dublin City Council voted to remove the waiver for waste collection or at least that's how certain parts of the media (right) and protest voters (left) would like it to be reported. The elites in their ivory tower stealing yet more from the poorest in society is a good headline and a good rallying call for political support. However, it appears that the truth is somewhat less exciting as what was actually passed is as follows

• Retention of the waiver for the standing charge
• A number of free bin collections for households with a waiver
• Payment for collections in excess of this free number

Doesn't seem so draconian now does it? According to research, households with the waiver were generating almost twice as much waste as compared to those that had to pay. Under the new regime there will be an incentive for those on the waiver to reduce their waste levels to save money.

In my house, we put out the brown bin once per month and the black bin maybe every 2 months. The frequency goes up in the summer to avoid smells but that comes to about €50 per annum, ignoring the standing charge. Now to my mind that seems like a fairly reasonable sum to pay to get rid of your rubbish even if you are pensioned, unemployed or on a low income.

Bus gate changes

Last night Dublin City Council voted 35-11 in favour of removing the bus gate on College Green in the evenings from mid-November to mid-January. The proposal was brought before the Council after the Dublin City Business Association said they had lost over 30% of trade since the measure was introduced. Of course no evidence was provided showing that this loss was due to the bus gate as opposed to say the economic climate and the high prices being charged by city centre businesses for goods and services.

On the other hand, independant research from Deloitte has shown that bus journey times have been greatly reduced in the city centre and that the numbers of cyclists in the area has been increased, in part from the bus gate and also from the Dublin Bikes scheme.

Hard facts like these matter not a whit to the City Manager and the Councillors as DCBA represent the people who pay rates. With DCC almost completely reliant on rates and commercial water for income it is no surprise that when the piper starts playing the Council gets up to dance. Since the next local elections are over 4 years away the Councillors only have to keep business onside and can stick two fingers up at the voters.

The biggest worry about this development is that DCBA will use the upsurge in business brought about by the usual Christmas trade to argue that bus gate should not be re-introduced in January and that it should be phased out altogether. The Council should have stuck firm on the issue and kept the bus gate in place to make the city more accessible and safer for pedistrians, cyclists and users of public transport and left the gouging shopkeepers to wallow in their own misery.

As a Labour supporter it is especially galling to see that only four councillors (Gallagher, Kenny, Quinn and Upton) who voted to keep the bus gate as is. After all Cllr Montegue's efforts with the Dublin Bikes scheme you'd have thought at least he would have voted to keep it as well. Shame on the rest of them for caving into DCBA at the expense of the citizen.

Dublin Bikes

It was a long time coming, I remember discussing the scheme with Mary Freehill in 2007, but the Dublin Bikes scheme was finally launched on 13th September. For 10 euro a year I now have the freedom to scoot around town at lunchtime and get a small amount of exercise in the process. Sounds almost too good to be true.

Well unfortunately it is. In getting the scheme operational, Dublin City Council have sold their soul to the devil in the form of JC Decaux. DCC granted almost twice as much advertising per bike to JCD as was awarded in Paris. Also it appears as though the scheme was not tendered for publicly. Now, with only slightly more than a week gone, JCD have got a court order against a free iPhone app that would let you find in real-time the location of the nearest station and show the number of bikes and free stands at it.

Now don't get me wrong, I think the scheme is a wonderful idea. I've already clocked up over an hour of biking which is probably more than the total I've done in the last few years. I look forward to the scheme being extended to places like Fairview, Rathmines and out to Heuston and the Phoenix Park but it seems as though DCC will have to do that at their own cost as the JCD sweetheart deal won't cover it.