A BSTRACT Elections to 114 local authorities were held on 5 June 2009 against the backdrop of a struggling economy. It was not surprising that the problems besetting the national finances dominated the election campaign, relegating local government policy issues like planning, housing and roads to the margins of the debate. With the opposition parties successfully turning the elections into a referendum on the performance of the national government it was an uphill struggle for Fianna Fáil and the Green Party to keep the focus local. Ultimately the 2009 local elections in the Republic of Ireland confirmed the maxim that local elections are used to give sitting governments a mid-term shock. Fianna Fáil suffered its worst ever local election performance and Fine Gael emerged as the largest party at local authority level. As is customary at local elections, independents and others also experienced profitable returns.
The 2014 local elections were framed by legislation which dramatically altered the local government landscape and reduced the number of local authorities in the country from 114 to 31 with the abolition of the town council level. Though the elections received good levels of media coverage, turnout was disappointing and was the second lowest level recorded at Irish local elections in the history of the State. The elections were contested on a mixture of local and national issues and the austerity policies of the government were heavily criticised throughout the campaign. Unsurprisingly, the government parties suffered. Fine Gael lost over 100 council seats, but the Labour Party bore the brunt of the electorate's anger and only won 5 per cent of the seats. Fianna Fáil re-emerged as the biggest party at local government level, but its success was dwarfed by significant increases in support for Sinn Féin and the Non-Party/Independent grouping. Younger candidates and women also fared well at the 2014 local elections. In the aftermath of the elections, some interesting alliances were entered into, to control local authorities across the country. There is a concern that not all of these alliances will prove stable when difficult financial decisions have to be made and annual budgets have to be agreed.
The financial crisis from 2008 has had a profound impact on Irish local government. Councils were faced with a disastrous combination of factorsdeclining funding from central government, difficulties in collecting commercial rates as businesses struggled, and a drastic fall in revenue from development levies. Staffing levels in the local government sector were reduced by over 20 per cent, significantly more than the losses suffered by central government ministries and departments. Yet the financial crisis also offered an opportunity for reform and a fundamental reappraisal of subnational government in Ireland. A reform strategy produced in 2012 paved the way for the Local Government Reform Act, 2014. As a result of this legislation, the number of local authorities was reduced from 114 to 31 with the complete abolition of all town councils. The number of council seats also fell from 1,627 to 949. Using Scharpf's dimensions of democratic legitimacy, this article assesses whether the focus of the 2014 reforms was on output legitimacy (efficiency and effectiveness) as opposed to input legitimacy (citizen integration and participation).
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