Mayo Question: Are our elected reps really earning their keep?

by Caoimhín Rowland

Ireland has found itself once again grappling with the optics and realities of public pay and political priorities.

Newly released figures on May councillors' pay have reignited a familiar debate about whether our local representatives are earning their keep.

With salaries hovering just below €40,000, the public discourse has been predictably heated.

Social media lit up with cries of "gravy train" politics, and the image of well-padded pay packets being handed out while ordinary families tighten their belts is, understandably, a hard one to stomach.

But while the instinct to scrutinise councillor pay is fair, it may also be something of a red herring.

Because just as outrage was beginning to swell about the pay county councillors take home, another, far weightier figure slipped into the headlines, prompting even more pointed questions.

That figure is the ephemeral ‘Housing Tsar’, once tipped to be Brendan McDonagh, the outgoing chief executive of the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), now hurriedly stepping back from the government’s latest role to ‘fix’ the housing disaster.

The price tag mooted for this secondment has been reported to be close to half a million a year, a colossal figure in these times.

What’s more, his proposed appointment and subsequent backtracking has revealed fresh cracks in the already fractious coalition government.

It is Housing Minister James Browne, of Fianna Fáil, and secondary Housing Minister, An Taoiseach, who led the charge to appoint McDonagh to this newly imagined position.

McDonagh, a long-serving public servant, steered NAMA through some of the most complex financial terrain of post-crash Ireland.

But his pivot to a political appointment at a time when NAMA is winding down left many uneasy.

Not least among them are Fine Gael ministers, who, we’re told, were blindsided by the proposal.

Tánaiste Simon Harris wasn’t briefed on the plan in advance, learning about it only after it was leaked to the media, a revelation that speaks volumes about the internal communication, or lack thereof, at the top of government.

Privately, Fine Gael figures have expressed deep frustration.

One described the proposed move as “costing a huge amount of political capital” for “a role that won’t change anything.”

Another senior source questioned the rationale entirely, asking how placing a former banker at the centre of the housing crisis offers anything new to a public fast losing patience with endless plans, frameworks and slogans.

And here lies the rub: this is a state-led solution to a state-created problem.

Once again, the government’s response to a critical national issue is to create another title, another layer of management, another agency head, rather than enact root-and-branch reform. We’ve seen this script before.

Rebuilding Ireland. Housing for All. The Land Development Agency.

Each came with grand ambition and glossy presentation. Yet the housing crisis has not abated.

Homelessness is rising. Home ownership has become a fantasy for an entire generation. And now, we are meant to believe that the appointment of a Housing Tsar will somehow shift the gears.

It’s a strategy that seems to rely less on policy than on optics.

More than ever, politics in Ireland risks becoming a theatre of appearances where action is measured not by outcomes, but by announcements.

The public, however, is growing wise to it. People struggling to pay rent or save for a deposit don’t want another title or acronym for a well-heeled insider. They want a government that delivers.

There’s an irony here, too. NAMA itself was born out of a national failure, designed to take on the toxic debts of a property bubble pumped up by political short-termism and speculative greed.

That the man who led it might now become the saviour of our housing market is both poetic and troubling. It’s as though, in search of solutions, we are turning back to the same institutions that presided over past crises, hoping they might finally do things differently this time around.

To be clear, none of this is to cast personal aspersions on Brendan McDonagh, he’s backed out and the intense scrutiny may have played a part in his backtracking.

By all accounts, he has been a diligent steward of NAMA and is well-respected across government and business circles.

But it’s not the man that’s the issue, it’s the model.

We’ve become accustomed to believing that complex problems require equally complex structures to address them. But in the case of housing, what’s needed is not more bureaucracy, it’s more building.

Speaking to developers, builders and councillors, the major bugbear is bureaucracy, planning and the cost of materials. No one has asked for a half-million tsar to be appointed.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped looking for heroes in suits and started demanding answers from those already elected and empowered to lead.

Councillors may be an easy target, they’re accessible, hard-working and local, but the real decisions are being made far above their heads, often without scrutiny, transparency, or even the courtesy of coalition consensus.

This government will be judged entirely on the housing question. It will take a lot more than granny in the garden shed to solve the biggest crisis of our time.

For many, they feel they have waited long enough.