Congratulations to the new Mayor of Kilkenny! Who should be next?

A hearty congratulations to the new Mayor of Kilkenny, Andrew McGuinness. After topping the poll in June, he has been chosen by his city councillor colleagues, for a third time in the role. In previous years he has proven a popular mayor — energetic and giving of his time to a huge variety of people, groups, as well as visitors to the city.

There’s no doubt, the people of Kilkenny love their mayors. It can seem like a quaint notion at times, but if you want to celebrate or hold an event, open a shop, launch something in Kilkenny, there’s a few people you generally want in attendance — a Kilkenny hurler (past or present), for example, perhaps the Rose of Kilkenny, and usually the mayor!

Kilkenny has an unbroken record of local government since 1231, when its first council was elected, and it has a proud history of mayors and sovereigns. We’ve had some great people holding office in recent years, and over the last 800 years, mayors have included the likes of Shees, Butlers, Rothes — names very much associated with Kilkenny. And the gentleman who held office both in 1803 and 1813? No doubt a class act.

But - with no disrespect intended to the current mayor or any of his predecessors and successors - is there any merit to considering a directly-elected mayor?

At present, the mayor is essentially decided by a pact system whereby the controlling parties decide who gets a turn during the council’s five-year term. For many years, this was a Fine Gael-Labour pact, with Fianna Fail missing out on the mayoralty, and lamenting the fact.

Now, however, it’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. It is from these two parties the five mayors will likely come, although given that they make up just four of the seven city councillors it is entirely conceivable that one of them may be mayor twice in this council term. All have served as mayor previously and you certainly wouldn’t begrudge them — they were, after all, elected by the people!

However, a directly-elected mayor could be a beast of a different colour. In 2019, the people of Limerick city and county voted in favour of a proposal for a directly-elected mayor with executive functions. In June this year, Limerick became the first-ever local authority in Ireland where the voters directly elected their mayor — John Moran. He will serve a five-year term, earn a salary of €151,856, and have serious powers in relation to what he can do and get done.

It’s early days in terms of how that is going, but there is great interest in the Limerick experiment, and no doubt plenty of people will be following it closely to see how it goes.

The mayor has taken over responsibility for many of the functions currently performed by the Chief Executive in other counties. He can develop and implement strategies and initiatives that benefit Limerick — in strategic planning, housing strategy, roads and so on. He proposes the anuual budget.

Who would Kilkenny pick as its directly-elected mayor? It would of course, depend on who puts their name forward. Would we go for a seasoned politician — someone who’s been mayor before? There would be nothing to stop, for example, the incumbent Andrew McGuinness or his deputy and predecessor, Joe Malone, from running. Would it be more of a civil servant — a council executive to be lured into the going before the electorate?

Or would we see something similar to what has become fashionable of late, and back a celebrity candidate?  Brian Cody would walk it (you might have a hard time convincing him to take it on), so would a host of other well-known and liked local, successful people. Willie Mullins? How about Evanne Ní Chuilinn, Ann Downey or Eamon Langton? We could have a lot of fun with it...

Fianna Fail TD Paul McAuliffe, who chaired the Oireachtas committee on the citizens’ assembly on a directly elected mayor, spoke last week at a Seanad hearing on the future of local government. Expressing his opinion that power is too concentrated in the hands of council executives, he said the option was there to change it.

“Local authorities now have the power to trigger a plebiscite in their county to hold a plebiscite for a directly elected mayor, to wrestle that power back from the chief executive,” he said. “The question is whether local authorities will take up that challenge.”