There was a lot of pomp and circumstance in the Burlington Hotel two weeks ago when hundreds of councillors and local authority officials from all over Ireland gathered to mark the centenary of local government in this country. The Local Government Act 1898 gave us the present county-based system of local administration and the elected councils that came with it. But all the fanfares at the Burlington could barely conceal the fact that real power is more centralised now than it was even in the reign of Queen Victoria.
New Year's Day will mark another anniversary of sorts: the coming into being five years ago of the current crop of powerless regional authorities and the associated carve-up of Co Dublin into three separate local authority areas. On January 1st, 1994, Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire county councils took over from the previous unwieldy parent body, complete with their own crests and seals, their own county managers and even - in South Dublin's case - its own civic offices opposite The Square in Tallaght.
There can be little doubt that this new dispensation was engineered for bureaucratic convenience. After all, if the aim was really to bring local government closer to the people, smaller units would have been required; Tallaght itself, with a population of 90,000, could then have had its own urban council and the same privilege might have been extended to Dublin's other "new towns" - Lucan/Clondalkin and Blanchardstown, each now growing at breathtaking speed. Even in the city, Clontarf and Rathmines town councils might have been revived.
But this was not part of the bureaucratic or political agenda, no more than the creation of regional authorities with real power. As the then Minister for the Environment, Michael Smith, explained at the time, the new regional authorities "will not exercise executive, regulatory or financing functions". Indeed, he said he "took great pains . . . to ensure that they would not in any way duplicate, diminish, restrict or otherwise interfere with the functions of the existing authorities" at county level. So what then was the point in establishing them at all?
THE answer would appear to reside in Brussels. It is well known that the European Commission took a dim view of an earlier Fianna Fail government's decision, in 1988, to abolish the previous regional authorities and felt that there was a need for some mechanism at sub-national level to oversee the spending of EU funds. Thus, Michael Smith and his colleagues were left with no option but to set up something that would mollify our paymasters, given their irritating notions about transparency, accountability and the rest of it.
The most bizarre element of this ostensible step in the direction of devolution was the designation of Co Dublin as a "region" in its own right - ignoring the capital's spillover into adjoining counties. This was done at the behest of the Department of Finance, which had calculated that the county would attain the magic threshold of 75 per cent of mean European income by 1999. The concern, therefore, was to minimise the size of the Dublin "region" in order to ensure that the rest of the Republic would continue to qualify for "Objective 1" funding.
The Department was being overly pessimistic. As things turned out, other regions in the east and south have also reached the income threshold, leading to a scramble among elected representatives - led by Jackie Healy-Rae - to ensure that their home turf would continue to be classified as a disadvantaged area requiring the maximum level of EU aid. And the trouble is that we've become so accustomed to the drip-feed from Brussels that, given a choice, we would probably all prefer to have the perks of living in what cartoonist Martyn Turner has dubbed "Direland".
It is hard to know what the regional authorities actually do. Their role in "monitoring" EUfunded projects seems to kick in after the money has been allocated (by central government, of course) or even already spent. Otherwise, their only function is to promote the co-ordination of essential services, such as water and sewerage. But in Dublin's case, even though its boundaries are confined to the narrowest purview of The Pale, the regional authority has at least managed to hop a few balls in the air on such issues as sustainable development and Agenda 21.
Its most important contribution, in collaboration with the Mid-East regional authority (covering Meath, Kildare and Wicklow), involves the preparation of strategic planning guidelines to govern, or at least inform, major decisions on how the Greater Dublin area should develop in the future. But if this issue is felt to be of such importance and there is no prospect of any of the counties involved being classified by the EU as "disadvantaged", surely it would make more sense to merge these two quite artificial regions into one, to reflect reality on the ground?
Meanwhile, the creation of three new "counties" in Dublin itself has at least brought local government somewhat closer to those who are governed. Prior to the 1994 carve-up, the old county council treated seriously disadvantaged areas such as west Tallaght and north Clondalkin no differently to Rush and Lusk. The new councils have more of a physical presence in the areas of need, with officials refocusing services in communities they hardly knew existed five years ago. This alone represents a huge, and very welcome, change of approach.
BUT the new counties are independent of each other and of Dublin Corporation. And though they are required to "have regard" to what is known as the "metropolitan interest", this is so ill-defined that they can - and do - get on with the business of boosting their revenue from rates by permitting more and more commercial development. In other areas, such as water, sewerage, waste disposal and fire services, they share much in common and the four managers meet on a monthly basis to co-ordinate their activities in the interests of Dublin as a whole.
The three new "counties" are also seeking to forge new identities by putting up roadside signs on their boundaries (though Fingal had to drop the word "county" from its sign on the Airport motorway) and, more importantly, by building impressive new headquarters for themselves. However, it seems highly improbable that they will succeed in this endeavour without the one thing that really defines any county in Ireland - its own GAA team. Just remember how Kildare blossomed in lilywhite glory on its way to the last All-Ireland Football Final.
Until Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown - as well as Dublin City can field their own GAA county teams, they will not be treated as real counties in the public imagination; Co Dublin, even carved up like a Christmas turkey, will remain the unit which commands the loyalty of its people.
John Waters is on leave.