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John Moran is the first directly elected Mayor of Limerick.
Automated Transcript
There are probably on large number of people in that council chamber that would see themselves as mayor sometime.
And therefore, it is actually the nature of politics that they would like to take a, you know, a political shot at whatever is in the mayor, but I don’t think that there’s any empirical evidence that I’ve had seen one way or the other to substantiate the claim that you just tried to read from Michael.
This is Here’s How, Ireland’s political, social, and current affairs podcast presented by William Campbell.
Thank you for downloading episode 185 for the 29th of January, 2020-6.
Coming up in a few minutes, no big editorial spiel from me today, because we have an extended interview with the mayor of Limerick coming up.
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I’m joined now by John Morn.
He was educated in University College of Dublin and in Pennsylvania at the Wharton School and at the University of Pennsylvania.
He passed the New York State Bar.
He was a Wall Street lawyer and later he worked as an investment banker before he became the Secretary General of the Department of Finance.
Then about 18 months ago, he returned to his native Limerick to become the first directly elected mayor there or indeed anywhere in Ireland.
John, that must have been a terrible comment down for you.
I think everybody in life finds their place and as somebody who’s a travel to a world and lived in Paris, as well as Sydney and the US as you mentioned, shortly after my dad had become sick.
I spent a bit of time back here in Limerick with him and mum.
And just kind of probably as much as I fell back in love with it with the city.
It wasn’t obvious growing up in Limerick in the 80s.
I mean, Ireland was in some pretty tough times there.
And it was probably never an expectation of mine that I would return and be able to return back to Limerick.
But remote working, all that kind of stuff to be learned about the COVID, fundamentally changed that.
And I had been involved with a lot of things I’m sure we’ll talk about about changing local government and seeing what’s happening.
Specifically, specifically on that, then your term last on 1229, you do have a right to seek reelection.
But in 1229, how will Limerick be better than it would have been if it had continued under an old-style local authority? Yeah, so look, I think the obvious change.
And it’s tough, I think, for people to understand that yet.
But we have those leading problems every day.
It’s not in the past in Ireland, for people who have been following this stuff’s design.
The local authority was wrong, effectively, by member of the permanent civil administration.
And the mayor had a largely ceremonial role that shared the council chamber, but the rest of the powers were invested in the chief executive.
And if an Ireland’s a very decentralized system in the first place, a lot of power and Dublin compared to other countries, but equally than a lot of power invested in this in the civil service, you could say, for the local authority.
What would have changed is that a person would have been in this role as a five years, who has been responding to a direct mandate from the people who feel accountable to them every day.
And that is a counterbalance.
That’s a rationale.
Give me the difference.
Well, I think the difference would be people who are going into a election then in five years time, picking what limit they want for the next five.
I try to stay never been asked to do really in the same way.
We did that obviously in my own election, but a lot of candidates turned out by don’t think they’ll find this as being overly critical of them because we’re all learning where we’re going.
And then we’re going to say, well, we’re from this party, we’re from that party, and we’re just going to do better for the limit.
Yeah, I had a very detailed manifesto because I was actually going as an independent.
And I think that real difference would be that in the role of to the next election.
Limerick will be faced with more clear clarity around what each mayor is standing for, what they want to focus on over the following five years.
And therefore they will pick that.
And I think the next mayor will ironically have an even stronger dream across man did tonight had at the beginning.
I think that is true, but the answer that I’m trying to ring out of you is the person going to vote on that day, how will they say my life is different will they be able to transit get around the city any better will they have better hours and so forth.
Yeah, I mean, my main focus is housing.
And I suppose when you have two possible terms, I mean, nobody knows what will happen in 2013.
I would describe what I’m trying to do with three takes.
There have been a lot of things in Limerick that seem to just get stuck.
There weren’t lots of plans, not, you know, no delivery on them, lots of reasons for that.
I mean, I’m not blaming anybody.
But the first exercise was to spend the first year, year and a half on blocking things that should have been happening.
Can you be examples? I’m asking focus.
There’s going to be basically going to sign contracts on a government building just across the the street here, which has been a document that I approved or won’t for approval for government in 2014.
And the baselines built, but lots of conversations will get support in Berlin now, how to do it.
So this is this is the headquarters for Limerick City Council, I’m guessing.
I think the headquarters for the revenue commissioners, which are based in Limerick, I mean, decentralization exercise.
But in around the building where we are in our own headquarters for the medieval castles, we have a historic island that flooded about 11 years ago.
Again, lots of people were talking about, let’s get the flood detection done, etc.
The mayor had promised, I’m going to get that done.
And it was basically, I walked in a big priority for me because I knew I had promised to get it done.
And so now that’s going to be finished in the years time, if people on the island can sleep at night, no, if they’re not going to wake up to having their house loaded in the morning by the river.
Roads have been done, we’ve got the writer cop, we’ve got the votes and the infrastructure around that.
But housing is the second priority that I really wanted to get more delivery on.
And we can talk about everyone in one detail about what we’re starting now to see those individual projects.
We’ve had a poor record of delivery in Limerick, just like many other authorities in the island, which is why we have housing crisis.
And again, a sort of a relentless focus on that, how do we get it to work better and get projects going.
And then the third area, I suppose it’s always setting up for hopefully my second term, but if not for whoever is my successor, is getting the other stuff ready for the following five years.
So much more strategic thinking about how does our city operate, how do some of our council towns work, getting planning permissions ready, so at least the next term.
The then mayor can just say, right, it’s great to go with shuffle ready.
Now I just need to drive on and we’re in a cycle in Limerick, which is very close to the government, national cycle, because the national election took place shortly after mine.
So we’ve had heavy conversations at the beginning about what the government would finance and allow us to deliver in the five years.
And therefore that cycle should in the normal course repeat after the election of the next mayor.
So I want that question, what’s your annual budget? So the annual budget of the local authority is officially a bit in Europe, but 755 that is spent on a kind of service centre paying rent for all across the government.
So it’s about 250 you could say that respect in terms of the local revenue, 250 million in government.
Yeah, I then the mayor of Limerick, which is unique in Ireland, has also got an additional mayoral fund of eight million every year.
And that is what I used to really get some of that third chapter I talked about, ready to do the planning permissions.
It gets things that haven’t gotten across the line in terms of government priorities, but which I know the people of Limerick care about to try and make them happen.
So last year, Ireland doesn’t finance the purchase by local authorities of housing, sorry, of land.
If it’s not already zone for housing and ready for planning permission, but there was a unique opportunity for me to buy 70 acres of agricultural land in the village that we all think will have heavy growth.
In the next decade or so, I always aim to use the mayoral fund to secure that land as agricultural value.
And that would be change and put it in infrastructure.
I mean, actually the land value will go right up.
Okay.
Question.
Question for you then.
Is that power that you use there? Is that a power that does not exist in any of the other also local authorities? That could not.
And while the power exists to buy the land, you may not have the mayoral fund to be able to fund.
So I might not have the money, but they have the power to do it.
I’m wondering because I can see and I’ve been looking at your website and it talks about the mayor’s role.
And I’m wondering, do you have any powers that did not previously exist? You can answer just yes or no, because I want to go on to a sub question.
Do you have any powers that did not previously exist within any other local elected local authorities? Yes.
And the most important one is the interconnection between me and national government.
So there’s a lot of chairing and committees, but ministers and agencies that I can share.
And I have a separate power, which allows me to ask any minister of government or head of an agency who’s working on something related to Limerick.
You have to have an early consultation with Limerick.
Okay.
You will understand that that sounds a little bit like that you have the right to talk to people.
It sounds for a layperson.
I know if you’re in politics that might be different, but for a layperson that sounds a little bit not like a power just kind of like a talking shop.
But having looked at your website because a few things on your website and it talks about the main points of the mayor’s role.
And the four headings that it gives our strategic planning, housing strategy, environment and road transport.
So for example, if you thought on the strategic planning, if you thought that, say, a specific industry would be a good fit for Limerick and should be attracted into Limerick.
Would you have the power say to wave commercial rates as a tax week for that industry to attract as in? I personally don’t because that power for specific taxpayers has been granted to the director general.
So that’s why they don’t have essentially giving waivers to their friends.
But Limerick could make a decision with the consent of the councillors.
For example, on rates to try and do something you basically craft a rebate system back for that sector, right? And I think that I mean, I’m, you know, that’s the impression that I’ve never researched in advance.
But I know that in some situations where I thought where buildings are significant investments in the local authority or where the local authority previously, without national government approval, has actually decided to give rebates on vets.
So it would be the same logic as that you could do it far, everybody in a particular sector as well.
I wouldn’t be rushing to do it too often.
Understood.
Understood.
Under housing strategy, if you say, for example, where of the opinion that all or a portion of the budget that spent on temporary accommodation in Limerick should be switched to building permanent accommodation, would you have the power to redirect those funds? Yes.
So that’s local, right? And so a lot of work says that the mayor proposes the budget to the councillors.
Right? So the local councillor for the councillors have a significant number of reserve functions as we call them.
And then one of those is approving the actual budget.
So I could decide we’re going to move funding from one type of housing to another.
And if we were spending that local money here, then I could do that with the consent of the councillors.
They would be entitled at the meeting if politically we have a different perspective on this.
But I think that funding for temporary accommodation comes from central government.
That’s not part of that one billion slash 250 million that you have control over.
Would I be correct in saying you couldn’t really.
And that’s what I said.
In the first part of actually being sort of largely within our control, both sometimes in that part.
And you’ve highlighted the really important point are money that come into its first specific purpose.
So in the example you gave, there could be pulling coming down directly, but specifically under one, for example, at the last budget.
What we agreed and I proposed was that we spent about 10 million at the moment on the provision of temporary accommodation for about 150 people if I scared about it.
So specifically, could you say, we’re not doing that.
I mean, that’s a waste of money.
We’re going to build our own houses with us.
Well, what we’ve done is we know that we spent 10% of that locally out of our local budget 90% of some central government.
I calculated that in order to get some of the housing that we haven’t used.
There’s come back to us as permanent housing, but we haven’t got it fixed up to get back.
We could for several million euros rather than the 10 million.
I actually have all of those houses retrofitted and ready to go, which would mean that we wouldn’t have to spend the other money.
And for that, we identified that we will sell some of our existing assets to generate the money to be able to do that.
Okay, that was the same amount of time, but it’s like difficult to get there.
Okay, that would reduce the 10% contribution that the Limerick City Council makes to that.
And the 90% contribution that central government makes to that you wouldn’t be seeing anything out of that 90% of the saving that goes to the central government.
Am I correct? You’re right.
But that’s what all things are really important.
It’s true.
Unenvironment.
I counted that they’re getting back because I wanted back for a different reason.
I understand, and you might have a moral authority to thump the table, but you wouldn’t specifically have any little authority to do that.
Unenvironment.
If say you were of the opinion that increasing the minimum insulation requirements on new buildings in Limerick was a good idea.
Would you have the power to do that? We don’t have the power to mount.
Okay.
That’s a context of a different housing point.
We got the government to basically allow us to consider that.
I’m not going to interrupt on this, John, because I want to just kind of establish the limits of your power.
And I think that’s important for people to understand how you are doing, and indeed how well you’re doing the constraints that you’re operating under.
Road transport is that fourth point.
If you were of the opinion that was appropriate to change the speed limit on a particular road or roads in Limerick, would you have the power to do that? I think individual roads, yes, but if we wanted something to go down to 20 kilometers an hour, then authority, that’s a national national imperative.
We couldn’t do it.
We can work it in the parameters they say for individual roads, but could broad sweep say, we’re going to adopt a German approach and allow people to travel.
I’ll never speed it once, for example.
I understand what I’m hearing on that, and it’s not necessarily a criticism of you.
But the powers that you have access to, you have said about having meetings and so forth, and you probably being directly elected, have a degree of authority to go into a meeting with national government at whatever level and from the table.
But it is accurate, say, really, isn’t it, that if you were to compare yourself, not just to, let’s say, the government of Pennsylvania, where you were living, the degree of power that is delegated to them.
But even just the degree of power that a mayor in the U.S.
has, you are a very, very long way below that in terms of the amount of autonomy you have, isn’t that correct? Yeah, but this is not surprised, but it’s helpful for everyone to understand that, right? So, this is why I’m so excited about where we’re going and the people that are deciding to go down that route.
But Ireland is probably, I think, the second most centralized country in Europe in terms of power and decision making and funding controlled by national governments.
And the local municipalities are more implementers of policy-deserved elsewhere, and have to look for funding for rather small projects, which are then distributed across the country and you read a win in your lives.
And this is a journey that’s really important for me to make sure that the first step is success, but it’s a journey that I do believe Ireland has to go on, and the UK, even if it’s believe it or not, even though we inherited their system, is now gone ahead of us in this journey.
They constantly European cities that people will be familiar with, I’ll wear ahead.
There’s no question about the fact that there is more power at local authorities, whether that is ahead or not, maybe people will have different opinions, but there’s no question that that’s true.
It’s a problem.
It’s a problem.
It’s a problem.
I don’t know where I’m with the people.
They’re my good problem at that.
Yeah, I agree with you on that, and I think that’s a definite limitation that you have.
The issue, though, is that admittedly under a slightly different style in the sense of not having elected mirrors, you have worked in large multi-billion dollar, I guess, organizations in the US, and you have, you know, you’re not typical of somebody who has been in the role that you’re in.
School teachers are almost 10 opinion in terms of elected politicians, not least, with the t-shirt.
If you were in any other multi-billion dollar organization, how would you compare its level of professionalism? It’s work ethic, and it’s, essentially, it’s output to…
Yeah, I mean, look, two and three, it also is, right? So, professionalism, education, you know, commitment to an objective, which in this case is the measurement of limbic, I mean, there’s no question about that, right? Well, I wouldn’t say, and I’ve said this publicly, in other form as well, I just said, some of the type of constraints controls that you mentioned in the earlier part of the interview, come home to boost when it comes to driving forward the output, right? So, if we wanted to do analysis to sort of hang over from the last crisis, I think when I was in the Department of Finance, that just hasn’t been released, right? I want to hire another five people to actually, you know, work on that project about the housing, what we talked about.
I can’t do that, even if everybody in limbic agrees, we should do it, and even if I was following my marathon, without getting approval from a department or two in Dublin, to add five people to our staff.
Sure, I’m understood, and that’s that issue of power, but I’m thinking more of how they deserve.
There is a, you can tell me the number of people employed, I haven’t wasn’t able to find it, it’s very quickly online, but in Dublin City Council, in limbic City Council.
But my question is, the degree of professionalism, competence and work output, comparing it to the Wall Street firms of a similar size that you worked with, how would you say that just the actual operation of the bureaucracy works? Yeah, so look, I mean, you refer to this bureaucracy, I think that’s more to people understand, I can mean there are constraints in delivering projects in the public sector that you don’t have in the Wall Street firm or the European, the private firm, right? And that has to be understood and taken account.
There’s no, it’s, I think what I would love to provide a magic wand in the next two or three years to do, right? I’d like to be able to approach the authority here, and introduce some of the sort of structural changes that we’ve brought in.
The people to the Central Bank, whenever it’s there, and in the development of events.
And be allowed to heavily invest in the people both in terms of greater training, you know, the use of technology, particularly, not so much just having a laptop, but, you know, quite a type of software supports you would have to actually be able to do your day job.
Yeah, across different people, right? And there’s it’s been, I don’t know what their limit is any distance, although the local authorities, I haven’t been in a lot of the local authorities, but that is something that I would consider us to be under invested in for sure, right? And I think there is a equal, and again, I’ve said these things, right? It means there’s an equal lower focus, which is not surprising to me, because I saw the same thing in both of the other institutions I worked in a dolphin 10 years ago.
And under a lower focus here, then I would expect to see in the other organizations of their sides, and what I might term HR strategic HR.
And then helping people true.
Oh, I’m going to coach, I’m going to decode what you say that you say that there is a lower focus in the local authority than compared to other organizations that you’ve worked on on strategic HR, it repeat that in layman’s language for me.
So, well, what I think is that, you know, it tends to have an organization to work a lot more in silence, because, actually, they report to those silos in doubt.
Actually, if you could contact a reporting line a little bit, you could do more local management.
But if you decide to bring in a new system, which we’re trying to do, about the delivery of the Maryland program, which has lots of different actions, lots of different objectives.
There is a strategic, there’s a group of people working in local HR to help the management and the other officials to that change.
And it’s sort of a combination of understanding what project management is and how you would go about it facilitating sessions to work out what you’re doing.
But there’s also a kind of a real human element to that, which is changed as difficult for everybody.
And managers haven’t been to change, haven’t got necessarily all of the training to be able to do that.
And that is another organization, where I’ve merged companies at the least fluctuations, etc.
You would have dedicated people whose data is not necessarily building houses and managing the people through the change.
It’s actually helping them through the change.
Okay, let me ask you a specific question on that.
Roughly how many employees in the mix of the council? If you think you’re right, it’s 1500.
Okay, in an organization proportional to that on Wall Street or wherever else that you have worked in in your very illustrious career on average of those 1500.
How many every year would be fired? Well, partly to answer that question, right? Well, it gets to be a number first first.
Yeah, but give me a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit.
Yeah, I’m trying to understand that.
I understand, but I think I have to be able to clarify that before it’s to answer the question, right? Which is that the way that the structure of the role was set up.
And I’m not saying that this was the way we were advising the government at the time as lobbyists trying to get across the line and many opposition parties also met the same point, but the government met their choice.
And when the mayor is elected, they send out the priorities of what they want to achieve.
It’s important and reflective.
I understand that, but I want to number first on any typical Wall Street organization with 1500 employees.
It would certainly be more than one percentage would certainly be more than 15.
No, but I’d very very far people, example we were restructuring at that point.
No doubt, no doubt.
But if you are in a high achieving private sector organization, it is just the way the world is once in a while, somebody will end up in a job that they are not up to.
And in a high achieving private sector organization, they will very quickly be shown the door.
I don’t agree.
I don’t agree.
I don’t agree.
That’s in the US in a Wall Street bank or a Wall Street firm that people will not be very quickly fired if they’re not up to the job.
Okay.
So there’s two things.
First of all, you’re asking the context of the question with comparison to the US.
Exactly.
Okay.
Can maybe we can agree on one broad statement.
The chances of that happening in a private sector organization are dramatically higher than amongst the 1500 employees of look of a limited council.
My first point, you cannot compare to the US to the US.
I’m not comparing to US.
I’m comparing a private sector organization.
But if you look at a private organization, that is in I, as opposed to one in the US.
First of all, it’s a completely different set of rules and an organisational questions that you go true when you have.
What do you refer to as under performance, right? But most employers know that when you have a situation like that, the best outcome is to have re-engaged treatment with the employee.
Understand if they’re in the job that their motivated to do exactly what I have to take up the right resources to do it.
Because hiring and changing staff is actually a very disruptive and expensive thing.
But I don’t know.
Put on for a second, John.
If that person and it can be an uncomfortable position for people.
If that person who you are trying to retrain, trying to motivate and so forth, knows that at the end of that process, if they don’t shape up, they will be shown the door.
Then that’s a much stronger motivation to engage with us than if they know that if they don’t engage with the process, there will be no consequences.
I don’t disagree with that, but I think the better way for them to engage, right? Which is what you’re trying to find in the public sector by far, more so than in the private sector, is that there’s a commitment to a public sector outcome.
But people work in the public sector because they want to do with simplicity.
But good for their environment or good for a particular area.
There’s more of a motivation around that.
That actually thinking I’m going to be shown the door if I’m not actually doing my job.
And we all want to do the best and we all want to form well and be social people.
But if you mix into that, that if you don’t do the job, you will eventually be shown the door.
That provides additional motivation.
That happens in the public sector as well.
I mean, when we’re in the department of finance.
And this is why it’s important that you understand that I do not have HR functions.
I understand that.
So in terms of, you know, the broad concept of HR strategic HR and things like that, right? I mean, there are approaches that I might take in that role as secretary general of the department of finance.
You know, for example, pointing all of the the next two levels of people into a room.
And when we have to do to rank people as to their relative performances to others in the organization.
We think that as a group.
So that we got comparison right across the organization.
That’s my approach to it, right? I don’t do that here at all, right? So, so that’s what I mean by saying that maybe approach works well here.
Anyway, but when you compare, which is a more accurate, I think, or the don’t have comparison rather than this fascination with.
I’m really sure if people have to do it or not.
When you compare that, once you’ve found as we went through those by two years, those they’re about to break.
We found that the people who felt that they were working really hard, but maybe it’s the effort and needed to update knowledge to that.
Found and acknowledge them to all of that as well as having achieved more in their end of year.
Because it was it was measured and everything else.
And then the people just decided, I want to come to work to achieve the purpose, but I’m not looking for a promotion, et cetera.
We’re also understanding of their role and where they were.
And everybody tended to sort of settle into that in a much better way.
And we did a people who the first time especially that we went through this were not doing what they should have been doing.
And what was most impactful of about that exercise is that when it was explained to them how that was impacting on their other colleagues.
It did actually respond to that, but it’s really important to build that sense of cohesion and purpose among the team.
It’s in approach.
There are probably a whole lot of managers will be sitting in the school man Warren.
I would be involved if they all are different approaches.
That’s true.
That’s true.
But I want to look at the outcomes.
I want to look at the outcomes and that because amongst local authorities in general, there was previously authority part of their competence was driver licensing.
That has been removed and given to a national agency.
There was the administration of student grants that has been removed and given to a national agency.
There was the operation of the penalty point system that was removed and given to a national agency housing building local authority housing has basically just been removed.
Nobody’s doing it.
And planning in terms of national planning is also significantly being moved away from local authorities.
Nobody could really say that any of those changes was wrong and outrageous because the local authorities were doing those jobs so well.
Could they? I think you’re trying to go with me and saying stuff.
I don’t necessarily know.
No, okay.
Well, let me let me put the thesis to you.
It takes on the example to it.
It is an inevitable exercise in a small country like that.
20, 6 or 30 will local authorities.
So it’s certainly one across the 26 counties.
All doing very similar tasks.
It makes sense to centralize that.
For example, then, because I mentioned earlier, managers about courses of a billion euros works of payments on rent accommodation all across the country.
Social housing.
Not that means that they’re not doing it.
Card on that.
It can be anymore to doing it.
You have a limit.
Yes.
So where are we? Another agency are in a single space.
That’s a different type of analysis.
Ireland as a government tends to like new agencies.
You could just as easily have centralized all the issuing of drivers licenses into a particular local authority.
Yeah.
And it’s probably the same efficiency.
But they were driving for efficiencies.
What has happened in the other side is that local authority.
Sorry.
So I miss something there.
Have you said about it? I’m sorry.
I’m going to go back to you.
You’re saying you were saying they were driving for efficiencies.
Come on.
The administration for example of the penalty point system was an absolute disgrace.
Well, but I know I haven’t looked at that right.
I’m not.
But I’m telling you.
I’m telling you.
I’m telling you.
There were many scandals.
I can believe you.
But it’s a fabulous provocative statement.
But I wasn’t involved in it.
So I don’t know what I’m trying to do to finish the question.
Yes.
The decisions that have been taken have been introduced entirely new functions into local authorities.
And many of which they are best done locally and near the ground and near the people they impact.
And economic development, which we talked about earlier, you have to recognize that the record of Limit which is one of the first local authorities to take on the big task of job creation coming out of the Delta crisis.
It has been for a moment.
Now I won’t try and say that we’ve been phenomenal in the ability to deliver housing to car and respond with that.
And we all know that.
We’re trying to find ways to ramp that up in the same way.
But it’s not as simple as you say.
The particular functions that I think a local authority excels on are the type of things that happen in their middle last year, where we got unprecedented snow.
There were parts of our country shut down for a week.
Nobody in some of the media, not the parts of the country understood what’s going on.
Because there was no snow over there.
And they pulled out amazing like, you know, feet of working very late into the evening, early morning, student deliveries and emergency wishes.
And that means that kind of stuff needs to be acknowledged at the same time as figuring out why and how other functions can be done better.
Understood.
And I am your correct.
I’m trying to be a bit provocative.
I’m trying to guess and opinion out of you.
But the thesis, when I’m coming from it, which I will put you in a let you react to it, is that there can be no doubt that the local authorities in Ireland as a group have dramatically underperformed at a very high level of expense.
There’s a very expensive way of doing things badly.
And the reason why that has happened is because very often local authorities were doing a whole lot of things that they shouldn’t have been doing like administering 31 different penalty point systems.
When that’s unobviously better as a national function.
And the reason why they were doing things.
Things that they shouldn’t have been doing and not doing jobs that they should have been doing was because there is an effect to hate our effect in them.
That is essentially empire building.
In other words, there’s somebody there who’s in charge of the penalty points office of the student grant office or whatever it is.
And that’s their little empire and they’re not going to let go of it regardless of how poor the outcomes are.
And I understand what you say about offering people support and retraining and so forth.
But sometimes you have to have the courage to stand up to people and say, no, you’re doing a rubbish job and you shouldn’t be doing this and we should be doing this in a different way and probably somebody else should be doing this isn’t that true.
But I don’t necessarily want to agree specifically what I’m saying.
What I want to do with them, which is why I support the fact that we’re doing right is I believe in the.
Forward steps you make in the public sector more generally by having increased democratic accountability and putting a spotlight and additional transparency.
And the best way to do that is to have a an ignited council chamber.
We believe that they can actually make a change in the area for which they’re voted for and have a full time.
Mayor, who has executive functions, who essentially can actually look into all of those issues and understand the full picture and go there right.
But I think it’s hard to analyze local authority performance in Ireland.
We don’t also understand the constraints on which they operate both budgetary and in terms of the controls we mentioned earlier right and again that’s why for me this is hopefully the beginning of a journey right in Irish local government.
And I mean people that live in parts of France will give us about the local Mary as well as they definitely do another place.
But there is a greater ownership of the decision making choices to trade off, etc.
But local authorities of municipalities making those areas there is a greater feeling of autonomy and the ability to deliver for the local public because the amount of money given is for example in the day in Denmark is nearly 67% of all taxes revenue.
And so what what I think this is hopefully going to to drive forward to kind of round or comfort circle on the interview is that because I now full time in the realm because I can see stuff and I think of the role to political lenses, right, in terms of accountability I want to get related I know etc.
And it’s a dynamic difference to that which of permanent secretary or permanent administration thinks about stuff and that’s why our national government is set up that way locally.
I think we will see a lot of improvement in the areas that you mentioned.
So it’s a general matter because if we’re going to only come if there is an open national government to allow local authorities will want to reform and change to make it operate to do so even if the others don’t want.
Have you encountered much resistance.
Have you encountered much resistance.
And everything changes hard.
For example council john she and said this council is working fine of finagale said this council was working fine prior to the introduction of the directly elected mayor council Michael Collins of reinforced head morale was never as low in this organization and has been since the mayor election of 2024 that’s their opinion of you.
I’m not suggesting that I share this but it kind of does indicate that there is some resistance within the organization.
But you just understand why that might be the system.
I got to yes.
But yeah.
But I mean my response to them as it was at the time is I became mayor 18 months ago and Limerick is a city and a country that for a number of years has only delivered about 20 to 30% of the housing needs to pop the population against the targets we have.
I think it should have been much higher right and why we can excel in various areas there and some we do you know the facts are that there are things that need to change in terms for approach and in terms of that and also there needs to be more.
However, it is part of the transformation it impacts on them as well right is is that I think the council has the functions differently based on the fact that we have a mayor I think I would like to see councilors.
In effect we have an interest in areas step up to the place and become effectively politically leaders in that area might be in housing it might be a particular tile and some of them have been doing that and like well can that don’t work happen before not.
But I welcome that fully because it means that I just get on with doing all the stuff and they they help me to deliver with the executive stuff we have to do a different approach.
And John is aware of this I can’t remember the mic I don’t think he’s on the audit committee but I think that the audit committee process we were talking about this morning that we go through in the week.
It has not been as robust as I would have experienced in other areas.
And that that comes with a level of discomfort right last year at the audit committee presentation of the annual accounts.
I wanted to ask questions in the council chamber they weren’t used to that and they actually shot me down.
Right, which meant that I had to write 59 or 60 questions and writing to the intern to the audit committee looking for answers.
We’re now going through the same process again this year the answers aren’t fully back.
I’m trying to get them I want to share them with the other counselors who probably have a little training but we’re now going through a whole exercise of training all the counselors.
In how to set work programs for SPC’s how the SPC’s might work better how that will interact with the car specialist.
How and you’re obviously equally in the bubble of this stuff as I am but how the corporate policy group which used to simply look at the agenda for the meetings.
Now we’re just looking at policy questions in advance.
Obviously, we’ve issued the new demand analysis that last one day and I brought that to the corporate policy group.
We had some talk kind of conversations about what direction we should take in the delivery of housing in the record how that could go back to the SPC before coming to the council.
So, you know, look, this is an inevitability of change.
We have also got remember in Limerick the only local authority this in Ireland and in many ways the government national system is also done differently to here.
Where the people of Limerick will say to one person who represents all of Limerick.
This is the kind of presidential of the parliamentary.
Yeah, this is kind of a compromise version of Limerick that we want you to deliver.
We have a council chamber which is elected with people who represent smaller units of that of that county.
Some also represent different sectors of the population who tend to vote for one party of the other.
And more importantly, let’s keep pointing this out and let’s smile every time I say it.
There are probably a large number of people in that council chamber that would see themselves as mayor sometime.
And therefore, it is actually the nature of politics, but they would like to take a, you know, a political shot at whatever is in the mayor.
But I don’t think that there’s any empirical evidence that I’ve seen one way or the other to substantiate to claim the tutors priority from Michael, right.
But I do know that it had to transformational HR stuff that I talked about earlier, but it’s not my function.
And it’s Michael that is actually supposed to as a councilor, I suppose, allow me to ensure.
That’s about to answer.
Michael, it’s, it’s his job, allowing all the councilors to come through and allocate budget for that if that’s something they also think is a good idea or not.
Okay, the people of Limerick, the people of Cork actually voted down the idea of having a directly elected mayor, and that’s idea was co-abashed in Dublin.
I think by shenanigans amongst some local councillors in Fingal.
A, do you think they should and B, do you think they will reconsider? Yeah, I have to go fairly soon now.
Yeah, but I think this is, I mean, I think this is a still.
I think it’s fair to say that even the proprietary work for the arrival of the office in 2024 was probably not done in a way and it’s often hard.
I’m not being critical.
I just did say it’s an observation.
You know, a lot of the questions that we’re still trying to answer were not answered before I arrived into the office.
And it’s I always knew it would be hard to be the first one than the second.
I was once described as the George Washington of Irish mayors, right? Because George Washington also didn’t know a lot of the rules that children should apply to the role of others.
And it’s be fair made them up.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I think it’s like I think it’s fair.
You know, the discipline to say it.
But, but there are every day questions that come to me.
Before we’d stir is probably not an answer.
You know, how to we deal with this? How to we deal with that? How do we actually set up a process for this? I know that I know that you’re on the time pressure.
So I will ask you.
I think Clark absolutely many people in Clark tell me every time I go down there that they regret that decision.
Because they can see the exposure internationally that limits getting.
They can see the new chains of communication for lobbying, for looking for stuff that limit you need to has because of the nature of this role.
And I think they loved it.
You have anticipated half of the question that I was going to ask.
The second half of the question is will you commit to going before the start in 2020 and before the start of your potential re-election campaign? Commit to coming back on the podcast and to explain what you have achieved and what you would intend to achieve if you had a second term? I’ll be only too happy to do but I will commit to something else as well, which is that one of the things we’re trying to focus on this year and there for it to make you much easier to ask me all those questions is I had wanted to be able to publish what we would achieve every quarter or trying to achieve every quarter.
And then afterwards say what we have done and what we’re focusing on for the new year.
Yeah, some of the changes and we mentioned earlier have made that, but I’ve been disappointed by that.
Not possible to be delivered through the course of last year, but we are re-doping our efforts to be able to do something like that this year.
Isn’t that very healthy? And it’s accountability, it’s transparency and it’s actually, frankly, getting everybody in the organization to know what it is that we want them to deliver in that quarter as opposed to just working hard.
And it’s, it’s really something that has been a big focus of ours in the last number of months because we all know the facts are that when the money was allocated to the mayor last year for projects and projects right there to find.
We weren’t as ready to deliver the message as additional projects and top of all the other services we had and this year we were trying to adjust things to do better.
But you’re that much more ammunition to be able to fire questions out the next time that will be based on the facts of what happened to deliver.
So hopefully I’ll be having a good very good answers as well for you at the time.
I will hold you to that.
John Morn, first directly elected mayor of Limerick from Wall Street to the Shannon.
Thank you very much for talking to me.
My pleasure.
Thank you very much.
Here’s how is Ireland’s political, social and current affairs podcast? Go to the website for sources and references from the show and while you’re there you can like the show on Facebook.
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Thank you for listening.
Thank you.
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