A few weeks ago, along with Lady Hog, I activated my db account. That’s Dublin bikes, the fantastic scheme whereby we can wave a card in front of a scanner and make off across the city on a funky blue-green bike, dropping it off at any one of dozens of locations. Call me what you will, but I love it.

It’s civilised. And cool. Especially since most people have just absorbed them into their routines. They’ll grab a bike like they’d grab a cab. No big deal.
And it’s intrinsically European. Not particularly because the company is French and the same scheme operates in Paris. No, it makes a city like Dublin more like other cool and civilised places, like Amsterdam. Let’s say it nods more towards Berlin than Boston. Perfect!
Of course, while you’re pedalling around the town you notice stuff, you know, like traffic. Ah, the joy of zipping past stalled cars, their owners slowly stewing and going nowhere! There are no speedometers on the dbs, but a lot of the time they go faster than other vehicular traffic and for sure I’ve exceeded 30kmh going down Gardiner Street. Oops!!
This, as you’ve no doubt heard, is the new inner city speed limit. It’s fine if you’re a cyclist – mostly you don’t break it yer honour – but hell for car drivers. I mean, it’s absurd. You wind up travelling in third gear and using more fuel as a result.
It goes without saying that this regulation was introduced without any consultation with the city’s electorate. Well, that’s par for the course. Few bye-laws introduced by any City or County Council in the country bear any resemblance to anything proposed by candidates during local elections.
At the end of the day you have to blame the councillors: they’re the ones who pass them. But behind them are the unelected officials who make most of the running.
Ask any of them and they’ll protest their belief in local democracy and their commitment to serving the wishes of the electors. But examine what they guide towards the councils and you’ll find old-fashioned paternalism and autocracy. They firmly believe that they know best and they’ll implement it whether a majority of voters or indeed councillors agree with them or not. It’s infuriating.
It also lends particular piquancy to the present stand-off between John Gormley, Minister for the Environment, and Dublin City Council over waste management policy in general and incineration in particular.
The Minister has a particular interest in the proposed plan for an incinerator since he lives right beside where it’s to be built. And the local voters know it.
He has consistently argued that the level of waste doesn’t warrant an incinerator, and certainly not one of the proposed size. Ironically, this is partly due to the success of other waste management developments.
To support his case he commissioned a review of the international research literature. Unsurprisingly, the review endorsed his view. Undaunted, the City Council commissioned what can only be described as a counter-review. It was conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Unsurprisingly, it contradicted the Minister’s position.
It cost them too. Dublin city manager told the Oireachtas environment sub-committee that the council paid the ESRI €103,000 plus VAT for the report.
This one will run and run, believe me.
What lends this its piquancy of course is that Minister Gormley is working on legislation to have an elected Mayor for Dublin by June this year.
A lot of people are unimpressed. I mean, what’s the point? If this individual has any executive powers the outcomes will, almost certainly, be indistinguishable from what the council already does and equally regardless of the actual wishes of the electorate. In fact, the Mayor will most likely cut the ribbon on the Poolbeg Incinerator when the time comes…
The point is that mayors and councils and electoral processes don’t equal local democracy and local decision-making. You can install a Mayor, but it’s the officials who’ll be reducing speed limits and trying to introduce stupid and undemocratic regulations on public gatherings.
On a daily basis each of us contends with things that have been decided by people who manage local government but haven’t been elected, decisions which often affect us in quite intimate ways. Sometimes they please us, like the Dublin Bike scheme. But more often than not they piss most of us off. We’ve had a lot of easterly winds in recent times and smoke from an incinerator would waft well inland. I doubt that many will be happy. Not even db cyclists…
One could go on. Real local government would be a boon. But arrogant disregard for what the people want? Nah, not on.
So, giving more powers to local government and electing a mayor for Dublin is putting the cart before the horse. Real reform of local government and its myriad structures ought to come first.
But then, people have been talking about that for as long as they’ve been talking about draining the Shannon – so don’t hold your breath. Unless the incinerator is built, of course…