Will local democracy taskforce deliver meaningful change to Mayo?

Irish local democracy is in for a shake-up, and not before time.

An expedited plan has now been brought forward, and credit where it's due - implementation is being fast-tracked.

The burning question is whether Dublin will actually let go of power, and devolve it to an adequate level.

Before the taskforce's report was even published, it was made clear that town councils would not return, and that rural hinterlands surrounding towns would not be left out.

The headline aim of the report and of the government's implementation plan is to hand greater powers to municipal districts, turning them into fully-fledged municipal councils.

That means Castlebar, Ballina, Westport-Belmullet and Swinford-Claremorris will reportedly get more devolved powers.

But on my reading, this report shifts power to local areas away from the county council executive, not from Dublin. Little to nothing is coming back from Kildare Street to stakeholders in Mayo.

Oversight committees will increase, and executives will be put on a tighter leash.

As Minister of State John Cummins - who served as a county councillor for ten years - said at the launch of the implementation plan: "This report marks a significant step towards rebalancing the relationship between elected members and the executive."

He added: "Over time there has been a shift in where decision-making power lies. These recommendations are about restoring the correct balance; strengthening democratic oversight and ensuring councillors have the tools, information and authority they need to represent the people who elected them."

From my brief years covering local democracy, the real shift has been away from local councillors and towards state agencies. TII now runs national roads and greenways. The NTA looks after Local Link and rural bus services. Uisce Éireann runs the vast bulk of water schemes.

Even tourism - rightly pushed as a route to jobs and opportunity - will see Fáilte Ireland take a far bigger role once any project outgrows small-scale grant funding. It will even play a role in documenting Airbnb homeowners in Mayo - not the local authority.

It isn't just Mayo County Council that has lost power. It's happened right across the country. Yet the local authority is still first in line for the blame.

There's a maze of state agencies standing between councillors and getting anything done and councillors themselves have spoken about how hard it is to get a straight answer out of any of them.

Take the Newport wastewater debacle. Local politicians first raised the matter at council level, but it took dogged, buck-passing detective work by councillors just to identify who was actually responsible for a problem now stalling development in the west Mayo town.

Emails have been bounced from Mayo County Council to Uisce Éireann, to the EPA, and now to MARA, the new regulator issuing foreshore licences.

Ireland is needlessly bureaucratic, as we all know too well - but the taskforce's proposals focus only on shifting power from the maligned executive to elected representatives sitting on municipal councils. It's a boost for scorned councillors, not a fix for the bureaucratic maze itself.

How often have we seen the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR) come in and override councillors' local area plans or most recently the renewable energy strategy?

Neither you nor I voted for anyone to be on the OPR, but it will be the local councillor who will get the shellacking when they come knocking on our doors when no homes have been built, the local school shutters and the GAA club struggles to field a team.

Under the plan unveiled, executives will be given a statutory timeframe to respond to councillors' queries.

Next year will also bring new Council Oversight and Governance (COG) Committees, aimed at strengthening accountability and oversight of the executive, meaning Oireachtas members can haul them in for a grilling.

The hope is that this new cog in the machine speeds up decision-making - rather than becoming another layer that, like others before it, stymies progress.

One genuinely positive move is the shift of power back to municipal districts. From watching council meetings, the real work of a local authority happens at MD level.

Full council meetings are where those decisions are brought forward, debated at length, and too often, little of substance occurs. We are told elected members decide; civil servants advise, but with the layers of quangos unanswerable to anyone, this has rarely been the case.

What's missing, though, is transparency in practice. The word ‘transparent’ or ‘transparency’ appears eleven times across the 44-page document - yet there's no proposal to livestream council meetings in full. That's a change I believe should happen regardless, and it's a curious gap in a report so preoccupied with the language of openness.

The report is due to be implemented post-haste, with full implementation of strengthened municipal councils - and all relevant legislative provisions to be in situ following the 2029 local elections.

Legislation is expected within the next year to get the ball rolling.

After that will come dedicated municipal council budgets, giving towns and local priorities their own ring-fenced funding, alongside "enhanced visibility and public awareness of municipal council activities" through improved reporting and communications.

A final, intriguing detail: a commitment to a "longer-term framework for local democratic representation," including research on councillor numbers and electoral structures.

In other words, expect more council seats up for grabs in 2029, boundary changes from the Electoral Commission, and fewer constituents per councillor.

At the very least, it should mean the end of any talk of reviving town councils - they're consigned to the history books.

But these municipal councils will serve more than just our towns; they'll cover the full area beyond the urban core.

If it works as billed, it should be enough to lift Ireland out of the bottom tier of local democracy in Europe, and put real power back in the hands of local communities and stakeholders.