City Council are undoubtedly on the hook for a lot of this shambles although I doubt there are any higher level management there now who were involved up until the last few years when it was already a catastrophe. There have been three CEOs as far as I know since Simon Coveney held the sod turning ceremony in 2016. As mentioned in Kevin Collins's video, Cork City Council have little or no autonomy when it comes to large scale projects that are crucial to the local economy. The airport is the classic one, the focus is always on growing Dublin. If the city wants more Gardaí they are powerless beyond lobbying for that too.
I would say the majority if not all of the top tier of City Council staff (Directors of Service) are highly qualified and undergo a rigorous interview and assessment process before they are appointed. They are risk averse like much of the public service. That is also because they are always the scapegoats and that makes them less likely to take risks because the consequences for failure and not having done things by the book can be very public. They can be brought before Dáil committees and lambasted and humiliated, often by clueless TDs and senators looking for headlines.
It's a shit sandwich for many of them. Councillors and TDs are on one side and the media on the other and they are in the middle. Public servants aren't allowed to criticise politicians for the bullshit and two faced horseshit they come out with so they are the perfect punch bags.
Half the content on Prendeville and PJ Coogan's morning shows are just council bashing. Loads of it justified but also loads of it is deflection. Politicians pointing the finger at under-resourced services that they themselves cut funding from or refused increases to.
Did any of ye see the FF/FG senators and councillors lining up to criticise Wexford County Council for the lack of flood relief works? Yet it's central government that have put in the insanely restrictive planning and administrative red tape that councils encounter every step of the way. A lot of that is to ensure there's no fiddling of books and giving tenders to friends and it's good it's there but the downside then is that the process is really really slow. Blaming public servants for that is deflection of responsibility.
All of this and the stupidity and cynicism of the sod turning ceremony in 2016, and all the now clearly broken promises, undermines confidence in politicians, national government, local government and the local authority itself.
