Minister wants local councillors to have more decision making power

“What I believe in though is local democracy and more powers for our councilllors. I would like to see more decision making powers for our councillors, particularly in the preparation of council budgets,” Mr O’Brien said.

"Right now, councillors will pass budgets. I don’t believe that they have the level of input that they should have."

Asked if he believed that council chief executives have too much power, Mr O’Brien said: “I think we need to rebalance it. Yeah, I do actually, between the chief executives."

He said that while the Government’s new planning and development bill does address this, he wanted to see it go further in the future.

Mr O’Brien added that he wanted to see a better spread of representation within local politics, by profession, ethnicity, and gender.

“We’re getting better in relation to representation of women, we don’t have enough. 

We don’t have enough young people, and younger people have been put off by it frankly because of the abuse that they get.

“People are looking at it going: ‘Why would I do that?’ Why would you do that for €25,000 a year, taxed. They don’t do it for the money but, for a lot of people, it’s not even covering the expenses that they incur.” 

Annual salary

The Fianna Fáil TD said that the issue of councillors' pay was something he wanted to have a “really serious look at again”, citing the previous increases during his tenure.

Under existing rules, councillors receive an annual salary of €28,145 — which is taxable — while also receiving an allowance of €3,162.36 each year for expenses.

“We’re just over the council elections now. A lot of councillors put themselves forward, are elected, work very hard, and get very little thanks for it, and still don’t get paid enough,” Mr O’Brien said.

I think it’s something that we need to keep working on, because I value local democracy, and most of us do

"If you want good people in there, you’ve got to make sure that they’re remunerated correctly.” 

While he wants to take another look at pay, he said that he did not have a figure in mind.

The Dublin Fingal TD said that, while maternity leave for councillors has already been legislated for, he wanted to examine the possibility of paternity leave in the next Dáil.

“That’s something that I’m certainly interested in as I bring forward further changes," he said.

The laws around maternity leave, which were approved in 2022, allow for councillors to appoint a temporary substitute while taking their leave.

“We’ve got to work harder to encourage our newer communities to get involved,” he added, saying that it was great to see more people not born in Ireland get into local politics.

Mr O’Brien said that he has engaged with business representatives, seeking to encourage private companies to allow employees run in local elections.