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THE TRANSFER OF staff, budgets and a host of services between two sets of councils is set to be a “major challenge” to implement while still maintaining existing services for the people of Cork.
The long-running Cork boundary issue is slowly getting towards consensus, but there’s still an awful lot of work to be done before the city council takes over a large section of land, people and services from the county council.
Both councils have little over a year to get ready for the change, that will bring an extra 85,000 people into the population of Cork city.
Areas such as Ballincollig, Blarney, Donnybrook, Douglas, Rochestown, Cork Airport Glanmire and Sallybrook will become part of the city council, rather than the county, as part of the arrangement.
The idea of expanding Cork City Council has been mooted for several years, with a Department of Housing report last year saying the expansion was necessary to ensure that Cork is not left behind in terms of economic and social development.
New plans were needed to position Cork as “the engine of development and a counterweight to Dublin” and provide a “unified voice for Cork”.
After a consensus was mostly reached on how much land would be handed over last December, both councils face a huge task between now and next year’s local elections to get everything ready.
The man in charge of getting Cork City Council ready is David Joyce, who’s been appointed as transition director.
He told TheJournal.ie that there’s an awful lot of work to be done.
Joyce said: “We have no idea how many social housing units are in the expanded area. We don’t know how many parks, car parks, parking space, kilometres of road, public lighting… this is all information we don’t have at this point in time.
It’s hard for us to understand at the minute how much we’ll have to change. We’re trying to understand it on a service by service basis what [the county council] provides in terms of both people and finance.
Joyce said he was working closely with his counterpart in the county council to try to understand these things in advance of next year’s May/June deadline.
He explained: “So there’s a submission at the minute for the new electoral map, which has to be submitted to the Minister by 13 June. After that, we need to understand how the local authority will be structured, how many local representatives we’ll have etc.”
This is important, he said, as current and prospective councillors – some of whom may be vying for an election in a whole new council – will likely be starting their campaigns for next year soon enough.
One sticking point for many current councillors is that, while the electoral area is expanding, current proposals do not allow for an increase in the number of councillors.
Workers Party councillor Ted Tynan said that despite the population increase, not one additional seat would be added to the city council, which would “significantly dilute electoral representation on the council”.
TheJournal.ie understands that the city council is appealing this decision to government and petitioning for more councillors to be added to the new electoral areas.
What the county is saying
Cork County Council, which was vehement in its opposition to much of the initial proposals, has put in place a number of measures to commence the “transitional arrangements”.
A spokesperson for the county council told TheJournal.ie: “A high level implementation team has been established. This team will guide, direct and oversee the implementation programme within the county.”
“The transition programme is highly complex in nature, involving the transition of in excess of 400 local authority services,” the spokesperson said.
It will involve an enormous body of work. In addition, it will require a root and branch review – and redesign of – organisational structures and service delivery modelling for the remaining county. Budgetary and staffing matters will also need to be addressed at an early stage.
Joyce said that the city being given over such large swathes of land would provide many opportunities for development, so that the city can grow in line with “ambitious” objectives set out in the Ireland 2040 plan.
By 2040, the government wants the population of Cork to grow by 50-60% to at least 314,000.
With such a large population increase in little more than 20 years’ time expected, Ireland 2040 also aims for Cork to develop “ambitious large-scale regeneration projects for the provision of new employment, housing and supporting infrastructure”.
Joyce said that the government’s plan has given Cork “significantly higher targets to reach than other areas”, as the onus is on it to grow a large amount in the coming years.
“Every city can’t be the same size,” he said. “[But] if you have one de facto super city, that’s not good for the country. You need a very strong second city, and strong regional cities.”
For example, areas to the west of Cork city, that will now become part of the city council, will offer opportunities for further development.
“In recent years, we’ve identified places like Mayfield and the Docklands as prime for development,” Joyce said. “We’re not gonna come in and identify things that the county council hasn’t, but there are some prime areas there for development in the future.”
Having all this land as part of the city council will allow it to put in place coordinate plans to develop housing, transport and other services for the people of Cork in the years to come, he added.
‘A crucial stage’
The Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork City, Fergal Dennehy, told TheJournal.ie that what’s coming is going to be a “huge change for everyone”, while councillor Ken O’Flynn said that it comes at a “crucial stage in [Cork's] development”.
Councillor Dennehy said that the change may require a “bedding down process” given the complexities involved, but that it was a necessary thing to do to allow Cork to grow.
“It’s important we do extend, and we do make that change,” he said. “It’s still a small city. And even making the population 210,000 still makes it small by European standards.
But in 50 years’ time, it’ll be a city of half a million. We have to adapt. We might need to start thinking about building up.
But, before Cork can expand in this way, it needs to do an awful lot of work over the next year and the following years to get to grips with the transfer of everything from libraries, museums, roads, social housing, illegal dumping and a host of other services.
“The population of Cork now is so small, and even when it gets bigger there’s still such a significant gap between the cities,” Joyce said.
Narrowing the gap is critical. But we’re going to have work very hard over the next 10 years so that the foundations are put in place for Cork to grow.
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Build up especially in the Docklands area. Don’t allow what happened in Dublin. As soon as the recession hit, the SF & AAA dominated DCC immediately put a height limit on all buildings in the Docklands. As though it was tall buildings which were to blame! Those sorts of people need to be faught off at all times because they’re just waiting for their chance.
@Sandra O’Fucáif: NIMBY. Get over yourself. London is a great city and works very well. People in high rise and working in the city generally wouldn’t use a car. This would actually lead to less traffic.
@Sandra O’Fucáif: By not building are causing all those problems due to increased urban sprawl and more people having to commute for outside of the city!
@Ted Logan: London is a City of nearly 10 million, 14 million if you include the metropolitan area. Of course it’s gone high rise.
@Sandra O’Fucáif: ruin? How? By increasing the investability of the place? Or increasing population density to the point where people can earn a reasonable living while providing niche services? The limit on height in any city in this country is down to backwards traditionalist thinking which does nothing except slow us all down. We’ve got photos of a time when downtown Dallas was a few saloons and a trough for horses. Do you think they wish they’d left that little wooden saloon there to preserve the heritage???? It’s unbelievable nonsense
@Sandra O’Fucáif: you live and grew up in Dublin? Really? Then grow up.
@John Owens: agree 100%, nothing more frustrating when there is planning in the city for a new hotel, offices or apartments, and some backwards old fart lodges an objection to it based on “it will take away they city’s old heritage”, absolute horse $h1t, if you want old heritage move out to west ireland!!
@Fred Jonsen: Kalergi Plan EU. Barcelona Declaration 1995. What is Genocide?
@Sandra O’Fucáif: more people actually living in Dublin city means less cars…
@Sandra O’Fucáif: indeed, let’s build houses from wattle and daub and let Dublin sprawl in to kildare, Wicklow and Meath
@Sandra O’Fucáif:
There was mass protests in Dublin in the late 1700′s to stop the stop the construction of a major government building, it was claimed that the size and location of this building would not be in sympathy with the locality ruin the local ecosystem.
That building was the Custom House.
There has always been people happy to block change and there always will be.
More important question is who are these extra 85k people,are the gates to be opened on Ireland with immigrants after britain closes their gates when they leave the eu
@dick dastardly: the people are already living there, they are just expanding the city limits
@dick dastardly: They’re already there. They’re not ‘new’. They simply become part of the city’s population because the borders are expanding.
@dick dastardly: This misinformation and fake news really is a danger to society. That so many people have liked a comment which is just so blatantly wrong is worrying.
“By 2040, the government wants the population of Cork to grow by 50-60% to at least 314,000.”
This would be the government that currently presides over record numbers of homeless?? Can see this working…….
@Kerry Blake: And at present the population of Cork between city and county is 560,000 according to the last census.
@Kerry Blake: Why do they want to increase the population of the city so dramatically? The last time we had dramatic mass immigration it didn’t end well and we became a net emigration society again within a few years.
@Kerry Blake: The whole idea for larger population is to create cheap labour,nothing about where people will live,or schools shops or anything else that would be required for the extra people,higher rents that people cant afford ,build the houses first then impose rent restrictions and affordable houses and have some chance of becoming an extra large area
The Ireland 2040 plan with a target population increase of 1 million in 22 years. Given the current native Irish population growth trend , you can be sure that 75% of this 1 million is being planned to arrive in the form of unskilled economic migrants with a high percentage of these being Islamic. Sure they will fit right in with our culture and wont put any strain on our already strained public services and welfare system.Fantastic plan, we will be replaced by 2060!
@Gearóid: xenophobic much
@Orla van der Noll: Great argument there, from yet another snowflake with her head buried in the sand. Perhaps do your research and you will realise that these concerns my based on analysis and factual trends from around Europe.
@Gearóid: ” you can be sure that 75% of this 1 million is being planned to arrive in the form of unskilled economic migrants”
Except it isn’t. Read the 2040 plan, realise that the 1 million projection is mostly a natural population increase, and then come back and retract your statement. This wee bit of fake news refuses to die even after people have apologised for making the claim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7gZqqw5rTM
Or don’t do the last bit, that would be unheard of.
@ihcalaM: Wrong. Are you aware of the natural rate of growth of the Irish population, the actual FACTS? If you were aware then you would realise that the natural Irish population will grow by about 250k in that time. Go check it out and educate yourself. It’s ridiculous and ignorant to assume that 1 million extra people will come from newly born Irish people. In the long term, they are planning on mass immigration and replacement of the native Irish population and culture.
,
@Elvis King:
Excellent point, succulently made.
@Tweety McTweeter: excellent point…… I’m not so sure. Ye definitely have something in comma though.
@Elvis King: thanks for the laconic gesture
@saoirse janneau: __ I would have said that Elvis has left the building, but I don’t think he was in the building in the first place.
@Elvis King: So true, so true
I hope they make a better job of this in Cork than the mish-mash forced marriages of Limerick City and County, and Tipperary NR and SR, neither of which has delivered anything positive.
This is just waffle. Cork city council has to be one of the most incompetent bunch a naval gazers in the country. Big talk and big plans ? They spent 7 yrs with an idea of closing Patrick’s st as part of a traffic management plan . They made a complete bollix out of it to have it rammed back their throat.
The rate of change in the city is pitiful.
A travel programme once described it as an architecturally muddled city best seen by a bus. That was 20 yrs ago. Jack has changed.
City hall is scard to death of central government. It’s all pretty pathetic
The above article is the biggest load of horseshit management speak from a bunch of pencil pushers trying to justify their overpaid jobs.
“Department of Housing report last year saying the expansion was necessary to ensure that Cork is not left behind in terms of economic and social development”
Please…that ship sailed at long time ago.
I’m the president of Ireland….. More importantly… I’m from Cork
Are the extra people excess numbers from rural areas or Dublin city?
What if all council districts were circular? Like a ven diagram, overlapping areas controlled with shared budgets. County council way of doing things is outdated. At least in shared areas there is equal responsibility. Driving from one county to next gives different road surfaces as an example. You get brought to your nearest hospital not the one in your county that could be further away etc. Hope i am making sense!
@Fergal O’Hagan: not a bad idea in theory – but can you imagine the extra effort/cost/miscommunication if there are more than 2 bodies responsible a given area?
Building up is the only way to go if they want to double the population by 2040. I would love to hear any ideas on making the city centre a car free area. Build up a decent park and ride service on the North, West and East routs and upgrade the South one. Bring in the light rail system mentioned in the 2040 plan and improve bus services?
On a separate point, the negative comments here on the politicians being useless, will ye grow up. We have to look forward and complaining about this is in no way productive. We would never get anything done in this country if ye had yer way!
Amalgamating city and county would have made sense in terms of consolidating staff and services, with opportunities for making significant costs-savings. This proposal smacks of a re-run of the Health Boards/HSE which turned into a feeding-frenzy for bureaucrats. County rate and property-tax payers will pay a hefty price. Significantly, this proposal comes from the unelected bureaucrats that have the real power in Irish local government, and not from the powerless elected councillors. Democratic reform of local government rather than border-adjustments aimed at facilating an increase in taxes should be the priority.
All cork City has is the dead hand
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