‘I never wanted to see an airport again’ — Tipperary councillor on her year leading national body
After a year spent representing 950 councillors across Ireland and travelling as far afield as Strasbourg and Copenhagen, Tipperary’s Mary Hanna Hourigan is looking forward to putting her suitcase away and returning her focus to local issues.
Cllr Hourigan was elected as the chair of the Association of Local Government (AILG) last July, and has just finished up her term at the helm.
Now that her term has come to an end, Cllr Hourigan told the Irish Independent that she is looking forward to being more present around Tipperary.
“I was on the road so much, I’ve never done so much travelling,” she said.
“I was in Strasbourg twice, I was in Brussels, I was in the UK, I was up the North a bit, I was in Copenhagen. I was away so much that I never wanted to see an airport again, so I’m just glad to be back and trying to get my house back in order, and trying to catch up with people.”
The AILG represents the 950 city and county councillors across Ireland, organising training exercises and supporting them where possible.
During the time leading the AILG, Cllr Hourigan said a particular highlight was the publishing of the Local Democracy Taskforce Report, outlining key ways that local government can be made stronger in Ireland.
“That dominated most of the year, but it was a really good opportunity to be involved in the taskforce. We had a really good relationship with the Government Ministers, and with the staff in the various departments and in the Custom House and with the County and City Management Association (CCMA).
“I was in Dublin every week, some weeks I was there two or three times a week, so it really took me out of Tipperary a lot, but it was a good opportunity to influence the future direction of local government and to help secure a stronger role for the elected members,” she said.
One of the main aims of the Local Democracy Taskforce is to give more powers to councillors themselves, including giving them more influence over the budgets of the county council.
Cllr Hourigan said that this is a positive move, but noted that it will take some time to come to fruition.
“A lot of it will have to be changed with legislation. The process will start in September, and there’ll be a group set up to work on it.
“I think it has to change though, I think in the beginning, the chief executives were resistant to this, they didn’t want it, but after the year that we’ve had meeting them they knew it was going to happen,” she said.
“We’ll be setting up finance committees in the council. For example, I’m on the board of Tipperary Education and Training Board (ETB) and at the meetings, we are shown every penny that comes in, where it comes from and every penny that’s spent. That doesn’t happen with the council,” she added.
Councillors are involved in budget workshops and vote on adopting the budget each year, but a lot of money is spent on ‘miscellaneous’ items.
“We need clear oversight on that, and we need more accountability from the executives and the directors, we need more power to see what’s happening,” she explained.
During the year, the AILG also worked with their counterparts in Northern Ireland, joining together to sign a pledge on leadership in local government to end violence against women and girls, another stand-out of Cllr Hourigan’s time at the helm.
The lobby group also signed a pledge with the GAA, which brought GAA President Jarlath Burns to their conference in Clonmel.
Cllr Hourigan handed over the chain of office to new AILG president Aengus O’Rourke. © AILG.
“Our theme was planning and the GAA, with planning in rural Ireland, a lot of people find it hard to get planning to build one-off houses, and then they can’t come back home to the villages to live.
“Now I know that is changing since our event in April, planning is going to be easier, but the bottom line was that in my village of Cappawhite for example, we have great facilities.
“We have two GAA pitches, running track, we’ve got everything, but if you can’t fill the schools and you can’t build locally and stay locally, we’re not going to have the people to join the GAA. A lot of clubs are joining together because they don’t have the numbers,” the Fine Gael councillor said.
The Cappawhite native said that over the years since she became a councillor in 2009, the workload has gotten bigger, and said that the role should be considered a full-time job.
“The days of going into a meeting and not having things read and just sitting there is gone. The time has come for people to educate themselves a bit and take up the training that will be on offer,” she said.
As the role of a county councillor is officially a part-time job, many local representatives have full-time jobs, adding to the challenges they face.
“I gave up my business after I became a councillor after about a year and a half, you can’t do both. You either do one very well or you half do the other one,” she said.
“As a councillor, you don’t have a permanent job, and then it’s impossible to get a mortgage, and difficult to get a loan, so that’s why we’re not attracting young people in.”
A past report showed that councillors worked on average, 22 to 24 hours per week, a statistic that Cllr Hourigan said couldn’t be further from the truth.
“We work weekends, we work nights, we work evenings. I could show people the emails I send late at night because that’s the only chance I get to send them. We don’t work 9-5 and we're definitely not part-time.
“We’re full-time, and more than full-time in most cases,” she added.
Making the role a full-time position, and increasing the pay would help attract more people into local politics, the Fine Gael councillor said.
Currently, councillors are paid a base salary of between €28,000 and €31,000, in line with the public sector pay agreement, which is subject to tax. Councillors can also claim travel expenses and grants for sitting on various committees and groups.
Cllr Hourigan also said the workload was only one of the pressures facing councillors, with many people blaming local representatives for things they have no control over.
“We get blamed no matter what we do, people say it’s our fault.
“Irish Water is one of them, we’re getting it in the neck at the moment with all the problems with Irish Water, but we’re only talking to a call centre in Cork when we ring them,” Cllr Hourigan explained.
“People blame us, but the council has no remit for water anymore, and that’s a big issue in Tipperary. After housing, water is probably the biggest issue for councillors.”
Over the year as president of the AILG, Cllr Hourigan said she got the chance to meet councillors from all over the country, and learn how things are done in other local authorities.
“In Dublin, it’s very different from what we do. Dublin councillors don’t understand that we’re not leaflet dropping every weekend, they do their business very differently,” she explained.
Nationally, the Fine Gael councillor said housing is the biggest issue coming up for all 950 councillors across the country.
Roads, hospital waiting lists and school places are also very common concerns, as well as special school places for children with additional educational needs.
Despite the challenges, Cllr Hourigan said it was an honour to lead the AILG for the year.
“It was a great honour, a great year, and I’m glad to still be on the AILG executive for the coming year,” she added.