THE bubble can quickly burst for optimistic first-time councillors when they initially take their seats on Limerick City and County Council with ambitious and worthy notions of changing their little patches of the world overnight, writes Limerick Post reporter Alan Jacques.
Full of vim and vigour, enthusiastic and idealistic local representatives usually find themselves in for an awakening when the bureaucratic realities of representing their electorate sink in.
Far from instantly putting wrongs to right as they are reported to them, new Council members learn that the cogs of municipal government move at a much slower but more deliberate pace.
This can take some getting used to even for new employees at the coalface of parish-pump democracy — those working in the clerical or decision-making side of the Council – never mind the councillors themsleves.
So, for eager yet inexperienced elected Council members, still buzzing after their first successful election campaigns, it can be an eye-opening reality check.
Some promptly discover how to traverse the many regulatory pitfalls that stand in the way of getting things down. Others falter, and after a year or two are looking at their manifesto promises and checklists with a moment’s pause.
Such was the experience of first-time Independent Ireland councillor Tommy Hartigan, who has managed to get through his first year unscathed and settled into his new role comfortably.
There’s a wise head on these young shoulders and the Pallaskenry native has also deftly learned the art of diplomacy in his first 12 months.
This is evident when I ask Cllr Hartigan if being an elected representative is everything he expected it would be.
“No, but that’s not necessarily bad. There’s lots of pros and cons,” he told the Limerick Post in an extended interview.
“I didn’t blow up the expectations. I went in with an open mind and, I suppose, for the last 12 months I have kind of just observed and tried to learn as much as possible. The worst thing you can do when you go into a new job, in any job, is to start trying to change the system. You have to first learn what’s wrong with it and how it works at all.
“Honestly, I thought results would be quicker in coming for smaller things, the basic things, like lighting and potholes, even to get a tree trimmed. Look, it can be drawn out, but you get the win eventually,” Hartigan admits.
‘The slowness can be very frustrating’
Between the rules, regulations, budgets, party political manoeuvrings, irate constituents demanding results, or those whose expectations are just way too high, the 24-year-old has become well acquainted with the daily woes of being a county councillor.
He’s watched, educated himself in the workings of local democracy, and has a calm and confident air about him when the Limerick Post caught up with him at County Hall in Dooradoyle.
“I will admit that, before I came in, I would have been very critical of politicians for their lack of action, and lack of speed, when it came to getting results,” he says.
“I’m trying to get a disabled space put in at a primary school at the minute and, in my mind, it’s very straightforward — it’s a tin of paint. But no, a survey has to be done and, in fairness, the Council staff also have to abide by rules and regulations, and they work very hard to get things done. The slowness can be very frustrating, but you have to work within those perimeters. It’s all about finding the middle ground that everyone can agree on.
“We have to be realistic, it’s that simple. In an ideal world, there would be no need for politicians. That’s if the world was perfect and everything worked like it was supposed to. We’d just have a load of civil servants and it would run itself. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work. I’m very self-aware and I tell myself all the time that I’m only holding this seat for someone else coming up behind me. I’m treating it as a job, a job I have to interview for every five years with 28,000 people on the interview panel,” the Adare-Rathkeale representative declares like a seasoned veteran.
‘There’s days where I am pulling at my hair’
Cllr Hartigan is not one bit put off by all that he has seen in the last year relating to the workings of Limerick City and County Council, and it certainly hasn’t swayed him from standing next time round.
In fact, he’s already hoping he can do enough to impress the West Limerick interview panel for a number of years yet. A likeable young man with a calm and collected demeanour, Tommy is a grafter, he wants results, and quickly.
“There’s days where I am pulling at my hair, and then other days you get a good win, and I say to myself, ‘that was class’. I’ve always been involved with my local community and at the time of last year’s local elections I was on 14 committees,” he tells me.
“I was well used to getting things done. When there was a problem, I would roll up my sleeves and get stuck in. If a club was short of money, I’d say, ‘right, we’ll do a charity run’ and very quickly I could get it done.
“Now, I have all kinds of constraints, from time constraints to rules and regulations. My phone was blowing up with all the calls about cutting hedges and grass margins recently. I would have loved to have taken off with my strimmer and done the work myself.
“Before the election, I spotted a road sign that had been spray painted. I drove past it a couple of times and I said, ‘I must ring Richard O’Donoghue (County Limerick Independent Ireland TD) about that’. Eventually, I decided to go home and raid under the sink and came back and got the paint off myself. Sometimes it’s quicker to do it yourself, but that’s the issue with politics, in a nutshell, you just can’t work off your own volition.”
Before I take his leave, Cllr Hartigan tells me that he considers it a massive honour to be in the position he now finds himself in, representing the people of the Adare-Rathkeale Municipal District.
“It’s really grounding when a person trusts you enough to tell you personal details about things that have happened to them, about their marriages and children, and financial situations. People place huge trust in you as a councillor, and I often find it embarrassing when I see them before I have gotten a result for them. You would be avoiding people, but when you do get them a good result then, it’s a great feeling.”
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
