Dublin’s first directly elected mayor

Gormley says Dublin mayor election could be in June

MARY MINIHAN in Clane, Co Kildare

Sat, Jan 16, 2010

THE GREEN Party is looking for a celebrity candidate to contest the election for a mayor of Dublin which could take place as early as June, party sources have indicated.

Speaking as the Greens held a ‘think-in’ in Clane, Co Kildare, party leader John Gormley confirmed the heads of a Bill allowing for a directly elected mayor were ready to go to Government.

“We want to ensure that goes through the House in March and that we will be in place for a June election.”

Mr Gormley said the mayor’s wages would be “on a par with a ministerial salary”.

The Greens would put forward a candidate and he hoped it would be a “high-calibre” person, he told the party’s think-in.

In private sessions, Green figures speculated that other parties would run high-profile candidates, whom they suggested could include Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell and Labour TD Ruairí Quinn.

Environmental campaigner and broadcaster Duncan Stewart is understood to have been mentioned as someone who would make a good Green candidate. It was argued that the party needed to find a candidate with a blend of political experience and profile.

Asked to comment on rumours that former taoiseach Bertie Ahern could contest, Mr Gormley said the Green Party would have its own candidate and it was up to Fianna Fáil whom it wanted to put forward.

A spokeswoman for Mr Ahern said he was unavailable for comment last night.

Mr Gormley said the Dublin mayor would have “significant powers” in relation to transport and would sit on the national transportation authority. He or she would also have responsibility for planning, housing “and a number of other areas that are of significance, particularly from a Green perspective”.

He said a framework document outlining the functions of the office would be published shortly. The London mayoralty had been used as a model, although there would be differences: the Dublin mayor would not sit on policing or education boards, for example.

“This is extremely important because for far too long we haven’t had proper local government in this country; we’ve had local administration.”

He said the Dublin mayor would “very much set the agenda for the capital” and the functions of the office would serve as a template for other regions.

Meanwhile, Mr Gormley said he was taking action to prevent what he described as the “abuse” of expenses by councillors attending conferences. City and county councillors will be limited to €4,700 a year under the new regime.

“There was an industry that had been spawned for these conferences which were not really conferences. I saw at first hand where people were simply signing in and not attending these conferences, and that’s not good enough. I mean, that is an abuse.”

Mr Gormley told the ‘think-in’ that an inquiry into what went wrong in the banking system should begin “in the first half of this year”, starting with regulation and then moving on to banking.

“It is absolutely vital that any inquiry is absolutely independent and gets to the root cause of the regulation problems and the banking problems,” Mr Gormley added

© 2010 The Irish Times

Elected Dublin mayor ‘by June’
By Conor Ryan
Saturday, January 16, 2010

DUBLIN is on course to have a directly elected mayor this summer after legislation was produced to make it possible.

The heads of the bill were circulated this week and Environment Minister John Gormley expects it to be passed through the Dáil in March.

This would facilitate an election in June. And he said he already knew of parties who had approached celebrity candidates to run for the office.

He did not elaborate on which parties had made the move or who the personalities involved were.

Mr Gormley said the Mayor of Dublin will have roles in planning but will not sit on education and policing committees like its counterpart in London. Whoever is elected will be paid the same as a Cabinet minister.

However, Fine Gael’s environment spokesman Phil Hogan criticised the plan and said it was "half-baked".

He said the concept had not been thought through and electing a mayor in June, out-of-sync with other local elections, would confuse voters and depress turnout.

Mr Gormley said the London role evolved over time and accepted different responsibilities as it became more established.

The Green Party leader announced the heads of the new bill in Kildare at his parliamentary party’s think-in.

Meanwhile, rugby pundit George Hook has announced he will run for Mayor of Dublin if Bertie Ahern runs for the office.

During an interview with Labour party councillor and former Dublin Lord Mayor, Dermot Lacey, on his Newstalk show – who is seeking his party’s nomination in the mayoral election – Mr Hook announced: "If your man Bertie throws his hat in the ring for mayor I am telling you now, that I will stand on an anti-Bertie platform against him because Bertie led us into this abyss that we find ourselves in and if he runs for dog catcher I will oppose him," he said.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, January 16, 2010

Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland…#ixzz0cnCWbxgv