Departing Councillors on erosion of powers, social media power and stepping down

With sixty years between them in local government, Councillors Rena Donaghey and Nicholas Crossan bow out this week.

Both began on Buncrana Town Council in 1994.

In 1999, Fianna Fáil representative Donaghey was elected onto Donegal County Council with Independent Councillor Crossan, after a couple of near misses, elected to the local authority in 2014.

Donaghey and Crossan are not seeking re-election this week. Sinn Féin Councillors Marie Therese Gallagher and Liam Doherty are also not going forward. Nor is Donegal Town Independent Tom Conaghan.

“Miss it? Absolutely, I'll miss it,” says Donaghey, who has been beating the streets hard canvassing for Fionán Bradley.

“It was never easy, but there is something there when it came to election time where I just had to go again. It is addictive.

“It's not all about the big things. It's the whole lot of wee things: getting a medical card for someone; giving help to a person with a planning application; making a case for someone to get a Council house.

Times have changed and changed utterly since Donaghey and Crossan first dipped their toes into political waters 30 years ago, serving on the former urban council in Buncrana.

“The biggest change since I started is that a lot of powers have been taken away from councillors and things are being centralised back to Dublin,” Crossan, a central advocate in the formation of the Association of Irish Local Government in 2014, says.

“This has happened piece by piece. A little bit of education went. Then went a little bit of health, a little bit of planning . . . a lot of powers have gone to central places now and it's unfortunate because the local councillor knows the locality better.

“For example, you used to be able to contact the water service in Buncrana if there was something wrong with a pipe. Those lads would have known where every pipe in the place was. Now, you're ringing a call centre in cork and you're explaining 'it's five miles outside Buncrana' or 'it's three miles from Letterkenny'. It's just layers and layers of bureaucracy.”

In June 2014, under the Local Government Reform Act, town councils were abolished. That spelled the end for the Town Councils in Letterkenny, Buncrana and Bundoran.

“A really retrograde step,” Donaghey says. “People wouldn't have realised back then how important the Town Councils were.

“They are trying more and more to erode. Instead of giving powers to councillors, they are trying to take it away.

“Councillors are the eyes and the ears of people. We are in the middle of communities and we know what is needed. We have no say in planning now and no voice for the distribution of Council houses.

“Irish Water becoming a utility was definitely not good. Rural areas are going to keep suffering. Irish Water, for example, don't want to bring their services to rural areas.

“They want everyone to move into towns and I totally disagree with that. Think of your schools, your post offices, your football teams. These things cannot be allowed to be completely eroded.

“People in the centre of Dublin are making decisions for rural Ireland. They don't even understand rural Ireland.”

Crossan believes that the rise in social media use has been “one of the biggest drawbacks” in local politics.

“I think social media has had a massive impact on local councillors,” he says. “I don't do much of it myself, but I have noticed a big rise. And some of the stuff is just so far removed from reality.

“It has such a detrimental effect on people. Not so much in Donegal, but through the IALG I have heard of social media being responsible for driving people out of politics. It just gets to a point where they can't hack it.

“I got great support, but others are not as lucky. I keep saying that I am big enough and old enough and I am a fairly strong character, but I have seen it myself. I got stopped in the street and was verbally abused. It can happen on the street when you're out for a walk or if you're out for a beer at night. I have just learned how to deal with it.”

Donaghey recalls a time, pre-mobile phone, when the agenda for a monthly meeting “would have been at least three inches thick”.

The workload remains as testing, but the satisfaction was always in the local issue being resolved.

“I will miss the hurly-burly of fighting the Independent cause,” Crossan says.

“I will miss the banter, but it's the small things for people: Mrs Doherty has the lights out and you get it sorted with the ESB or the water is out and you get Uisce Eireann in. It's the small things for the small person.”