Louth CE wants to enhance quality of life of citizens in the county

Speaking to the Dundalk Democrat about a number of local issues, including housing, urban regeneration, tourism, and the Dundalk Carlingford Greenway, Louth County Council Chief Executive David Conway, said he would never rule any idea out, including the idea of supporting a return of the International Maytime Festival, once it fitted however, into a cohesive strategy, had an international understanding, and linked into what is in the county.

Keeping the “eye on the prize” throughout any project, is a modus operandi that has helped Louth's new Chief Executive deliver hugely significant public projects in previous roles, including the National Sports Campus and Limerick Twenty Thirty DAC, and it is a modus operandi that he aims to stick with in his tenure as Louth Chief Executive (CE), to ensure delivery of capital projects in Louth, and enhance the quality of life of its citizens.

David Conway officially began his tenure as the new Louth CE in January. The Limerick native has over two decades of experience in leadership roles, and prior to taking up his new role, was CEO of Limerick Twenty Thirty DAC (Designated Activity Company).

Limerick Twenty Thirty DAC was the first local authority wholly owned special purpose vehicle created in Ireland to deliver a city and countywide programme of investment, and as CEO he successfully led the development of key strategic sites in Limerick city, with a capitalised value of €1 billion for urban renewal and economic growth.

Louth's new CE hasn't wasted any time in getting under the bonnet and see the depth and breadth of the services provided by, and the responsibilities of, the local authority. Taking and dealing with the approximately 7,500 calls that come into Louth County Council's customer relationship management (CRM) system every month; 475 bins emptied every day of the week; looking after 1,600 km of public roads, including resurfacing 5% or 80km of them every year; running and servicing 14,000 lights public lights, 60% of which are LED, and 90 (or 0.6%) not working at the moment: just a few of the statistics he has to hand when outlining the breadth of the local authority's responsibilities.

“I can honestly say that what I have seen really impresses me in terms of the facets, the depths, what the Council does, the people that we have here, the Council that we have, the integration that we have with various resources”, he admits. “I don't think there is something in the county that a citizen doesn't get touched upon in relation to what we do.”

His introduction to the role, the staff and directors, and the councillors has been a positive one. “I'm very positive. It's a very vibrant place, two days are never the same. I rely very heavily on the directors as any CE would in any organisation, so it's been very positive overall.”

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Looking to the seven years ahead of him, he knows where the focus has to be. “I have a great expression – eye on the prize. What are we trying to achieve here? And I think that is my modus operandi in any role that I have taken up previously, be it the National Sports Campus or be it Limerick 2030 in terms of what we're trying to achieve and do here.

“Literally, what we're trying to do is enhance the quality of life of our citizens. And we need to be all on that page. I think overall I like to come back to, what are we all about through the values of the organisation. And if we actually have pride in the values and know exactly what they speak for, we will enhance what we try and do.” He outlines what those values are.

“Number one, and in no particular order, is citizen-centric. At the focus of what we do is the citizen, and around that we have services, we have roads, be it lights, be it transport, parking. There's some parts that we're not involved in – the HSE, medical, policing we're not involved in – but we have an association with them to move these things forward. And so we just need to have that collaboration happening and joined up thinking.

“We have to be democratic, because we live in a democratic society, and how we move forward and how we achieve that, we have a fantastic democracy in terms of who gets elected. It can be painful for candidates going forward, but I must compliment a lot of them putting themselves out there in the first place to do something. It's not an easy task, it's a 24/7, 365 job.

“We need good governance. The reason we need good governance is that a lot of it [our budget] is taxpayer's money, our citizens' money from rates, collections and so on. So we need to show how we're actually spending that, how we are accounting for that, how we're reporting on that. Be it in a public spending code format, or whatever format, we need to be clear [on how] we run our governance structures, so there is accountability in all of it and so on.

“Sustainability is another big issue for us as a value. Sustainability is everywhere, in every walk of life, every bit of industry we do at the moment and what we try and achieve. So in any business plan or anything we're looking at, we have to have sustainability. And we have our climate action plan, a fantastic book in relation to where we're going and so on. And that feeds into the organisation.

“The fifth one that I look at is in relation to equality and equity. Everyone is the same. There is no one you should ever look up [to] or you should never look down on someone, you should always look them in the eye. They have the same way of doing everything that we achieve. Everybody should be treated with the same respect and so on.

“The sixth one then is quite a unique one, innovation. We need to be innovative. I brought AI into all the senior management here. I want them to start using it. Get familiar with it so we can roll it out in the organisation. It's important, it's part of technology, it's part of business. Things like that.

“But also in terms of things like our processes. We have a new customer relationship package coming online very shortly. How is that interacting? Things have moved on in terms of how business needs to be done, but we need to be innovative.”

Mr Conway recognises the challenges ahead of the local authority in terms of things like housing, but also things which are no longer under the Council's responsibility, like water services.

In terms of housing, he points out that it is a national issue but adds, “I think if you look at our numbers, from a social delivery, we're ahead [of other local authorities]. You have to have housing at every level of the organisation – social, affordable, private, elderly, downsizing, all that. There's no silver bullet, unfortunately, for the delivery of housing, except numbers and quantum. What is the big issue for the delivery of housing? Viability.

“Viability in terms of, if you have a see-saw and you're trying to build houses and so on, and you want more houses here, you have to make it viable to achieve. You've got to make that as accessible, as cheap as possible, therefore your numbers will go up. Unfortunately at the moment, it's not viable to build, multi-storey apartments and so on, from a cash point of view. Viability to me is the key to unlocking our housing crisis.”

While water services and wastewater management are no longer the Council's responsibility, Mr Conway believes a partnership approach is the best way to move things forward. Meeting with Uisce Éireann on a quarterly basis to move things forward, is one way.

“As a county council, we are not responsible for, unfortunately, the water services. But it has a knock on effect to us. So how to we try and enhance that? I thoroughly believe that the only way we can get things done is the partnership approach. That's why we're meeting them.”

While issues like policing, housing, dereliction, and littering in our towns and villages are to the foremost of people's minds, the regeneration of our urban areas can help address some of these issues. With housing for example, more over the shop accommodation in the towns can be one of the actions that can help combat these issues.

“Dereliction is a national problem in city and town centres. I think we're lucky here, because we're normally two story, the majority of it.” This helps he adds, in terms of health and safety and fire regulations. I think I would be encouraging where you have people living, you get services required, ie the local corner shop, this type of thing, and it brings life back in. And then you have passive surveillance.”

A move that might be very welcome in towns like Dundalk. “Unfortunately, society is changing as well in relation to retail and social habits”, Mr Conway explained. “Unfortunately you have pubs now who don't open on Monday and Tuesday nights, they've had to bring in food as an offering to get the groups in. But there's some lovely offerings available in Dundalk.

“I constantly go out for lunch, to create opportunities. But some of them are closed Mondays and Tuesdays. And that's understandable because now they have a shift system, and small to medium enterprises are finding it difficult to drive that forward.

“I think the message has to be is that Louth County Council is pro-industry, it's pro-residential, and we will make everything happen as best we can, as long as it fits in with the rules and regulations that we've been given. And that's our constraint. But we're there to help, assist. And having more people in a vibrant town centre, helps the town centre.”

Something else that may help our town centres, as well as the county as a whole, is Louth County Council's tourism strategy.
The new CE laid out three challenges to his team to enhance tourism in the county. “We have a new strategy being implemented in terms of our tourism, so when I launched that, I gave them three challenges.

"The first challenge was that we seem to have a strategy for, Carlingford, Boyne, Ardee – fantastic in their own right, but we need a strategy for Louth. The second challenge was, we need to be inclusive of our neighbours – Meath, Monaghan, north, south.

“The third challenge I set for them was that it has to be international. I want us to embrace Europe, what's happening out there, what can we bring in, what can we do differently and drive it forward.” So could this mean perhaps that he might get behind for example, an idea to bring back the International Maytime Festival that ran in Dundalk for decades?

“Everything is a possibility, but how it fits into a cohesive strategy, linking in our neighbours, linking in international understanding, linking into what we have, I think that is important. I'd never rule anything out.

“When I was CEO of the National Sports Campus, if I had built a 50 metre pool with a local lens on, we'd never have got the facility we had. If I built an indoor arena just thinking about Irish athletes and so on, we'd never have that international arena that we have.

“So I think it's quite often that you have to go and taste what's available, what's good and beneficial, and how we can draw that back into what we're trying to achieve here.”

On the subject of sport the CE is enthusiastic about what Louth County Council can do to help out local athletes. “We are a sports nut nation, no different in Louth, between our fantastic female athletes that we've had, and how we celebrated them, and how we actually move that forward in terms of role models, in terms of providing them with the participation level.

“We don't need to get involved with the performance and the high performance – that's up to national governing bodies – we need to be getting our younger generation, and even our older generation, involved in participation. And if you go over to Muirhevnamor in the mornings, you see the active groups, a fantastic bunch. So we need lots of that happening.

“And then if they are young enough and they show promise, then it's up to the national governing bodies to take over. So with that we have a new strategy coming out, its being developed in terms of sport and facilities. Because what I want happening is I want to create the environment where sport happens, and then the programs that run in there, to allow it to maximise its ability.”

Working with the local community for the successful delivery of projects is paramount, Mr Conway believes, and it is an approach that needs to be taken on the Dundalk-Carlingford Greenway, the final topic discussed with the new Louth CE. “Building anything I have done in the past, if you look at my history, I've done an awful lot of key projects and infrastructure pieces, it's all about consultation.

“We're in the middle of a process, we're coming out to identifying what the key element of the site is. Let's see where that goes in relation to the next stage. People that are in total opposition to it might not have the right facts and figures and so on, or they might be totally opposed to it.

“I think we have to do it in a democratic way in achieving that. So I'd be saying, let's get to the next stage of the process, see where it is there and then take it from there.”

Looking at fears of local farmers and householders that may be impacted by the greenway, in terms of security and so on, he said that “the same issues occurred all over the country [where other greenways were built]. How do they mitigate those and how do they move around all that kind of stuff? There's nothing new I think, in terms of what I'm hearing in terms of objections, and I'm cognisant of the objections. We'll see how it moves in terms of delivery.”