Ray McAdam: ‘I don’t believe a directly elected mayor would be effective for Dublin’
Capital’s new Lord Mayor wants to see more investment and regeneration to help restore civic pride in the city
Fine Gael’s Ray McAdam was elected as the 358th Lord Mayor of Dublin on June 30, succeeding fellow councillor Emma Blain.During his 12-month term, he hopes to focus on regeneration, investment and restoring civic pride, but rejects the idea that a directly elected mayor for the capital is a better way to achieve such change.He believes local government works best through collaboration, and thinks a directly elected mayor with their own policy platform could stick a spanner in that machine.“I don’t believe a directly elected mayor would be effective for Dublin,” Mr McAdam said.“The best way to explain my view is that if you look at the current coalition we have in Dublin City Council, it’s made up of Fine Gael, the Greens, Fianna Fáil and Labour. The leader of the largest party is Fine Gael, we would have the mayoralty for five years, as how a taoiseach would be elected.“The deputy lord mayor would probably be two-and-a-half years to the Greens and Fianna Fáil, because they’re the same number of seats.”Lord Mayor Ray McAdam wants to restore civic pride in the city. Photo: Gerry MooneyMr McAdam said the council’s committee chairpeople would then be responsible for their respective departments, in much the same way as the national government functions.While the level of control afforded to the Lord Mayor under the current system is up for debate, Mr McAdam said it will not stop him trying to push for effective change.“I need to make sure that I drive my own agenda. I want to keep that narrow and I need to keep it focused,” he said.“I have 12 months, 365 days, 52 weeks. I want to make every single day count.“We are not good at maintaining things. And I make no apologies for saying it. We have to knock heads together, from the chief executive down. I have a very good working relationship with the chief executive, but this silo mentality needs to end.“We are there to serve Dubliners. If we are going to install these structures, then we need to maintain them.“I don’t want to hear, ‘it’s not our responsibility’, or ‘it’s environment or transport, or active travel’. Just get it done.”We need to do maintenance better in this city, and you can quote me on thatAs if to prove his point, Mr McAdam addresses the issue of broken bulbs all along the roadside of Dublin’s landmark Samuel Beckett Bridge, brought up by our photographer at the start of our meeting.“We need to do maintenance better in this city, and you can quote me on that,” he said.“When you’re driving across that bridge next week, those lights will be fixed.”He also believes Dublin residents should contribute more to their local communities and areas, injecting a sense of civic pride back into the city.“Dubliners expect their city to be maintained well and, my philosophy is, if we’re not looking after the city and maintaining the city well enough, we can’t expect more of Dubliners,” he said.“We have a responsibility to show leadership.”As a councillor for the north inner city since 2009, Mr McAdam knows all too well how urban decay can spread if left unchecked.During his inaugural address as Lord Mayor on June 30, he said: “Let’s treat dereliction as a civic emergency and respond with the ambition it demands.”Lord Mayor Ray McAdam at the Mansion House in Dublin. Photo: Gerry MooneyAs part of that drive, he wants to create a publicly accessible vacancy map of the city and use his experience on the council’s urban regeneration working group to push the measures it is currently formulating.One of the expected key suggestions from the group, which will issue its final report in September, is the creation of a so-called special purpose vehicle (SPV) owned by the council for investment.He hopes this could drive regeneration projects in the vein of Limerick 2030.“When you are in a housing supply crisis like we’re in, we need to be able to provide units or homes at scale,” Mr McAdam said.“That’s where I think the SPV provides Dublin City Council an opportunity.“We have a number of streets, or a number of areas where we have now acquired direct properties. The housing department wanted to refurbish them for public housing use, but the time to get through design and planning and all of that was too cumbersome.”The SPV, he said, would aim to streamline the process of turning an empty building into a usable site through a dedicated regeneration unit.The broader dereliction conversation is taking place against the backdrop of the so-called “10 big moves” recommended in last year’s Dublin City Taskforce report, which aimed to revitalise the capital.Those measures, including 1,000 extra gardaí, the revitalisation of O’Connell Street and wide-ranging upgrades to council complexes and derelict sites across the city, have seen an initial injection of €114m under the Government’s Urban Regeneration and Development Fund.But that pales in comparison with the measures’ overall projected price tag of up to €1bn.The Lord Mayor thinks October will hold more news on that front.“With the upcoming budget, I’m confident we will start to see the early indications of funding, but also the early allocations of funding,” he said.“I don’t expect all of this funding in one year, I don’t think anyone does. But I do expect a clear direction of travel.”Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
