James Geoghegan, the recently appointed Lord Mayor of Dublin, cannot be accused of being a lame duck. This is in spite of Geoghegan being tipped for a seat in the Dáil as Fine Gael’s chosen candidate for Dublin Bay South, and at odds with the office of the Lord Mayor being limited to a single year term.
“Irrespective of whatever the future may hold for me, politically or otherwise, I’d have adopted the exact same approach”, he told me, although he admitted that he is “in a rush to achieve” his goals as Lord Mayor.
Geoghegan is the heir to a strong family legacy in the Irish judicial system, with both of his parents and his two grandfathers having served on the Supreme Court. In line with this family tradition, Geoghegan is also a practising barrister, a profession he maintains alongside representing the Pembroke area of Dublin 4 for the past five years.
Throughout his time as a councillor for Pembroke, some of his political projects of note have been to create autism-friendly village centres, further the pedestrianisation of streetscapes and increase the supply of housing.
His term as councillor has led him to believe that the system of local government in Ireland is “one of the weakest, to be frank, right across Europe”. What many won’t know is that an unelected executive yields much power on Dublin City Council, with Geoghegan saying that the primary objective of a councillor is to hold this executive to account.
The executive “are the ones who make most of the decisions”, he explained, “but they have to be approved” by elected local councillors. “You’re trying to impose your priorities onto that chief executive and work with them. You try not to work around them – but if you have to, you do”.
This system has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, most notably after the most recent chief executive of Dublin City Council, a man named Owen Keegan, made the outlandish comment that Dublin’s homeless accommodation is an “attractive option” for people who might not want to leave.
Being Lord Mayor, however, Geoghegan stated is “a totally different ball game”. Labelling his time as a councillor as “a real privilege”, he now must take a broader view to his policies, and couple this with particular attention to the city centre. He hopes to achieve this through the legislative agenda agreed upon by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Green Party and Labour representatives in Dublin City Council, which has been named Delivering for Dublin.
This is a “back to basics approach” to local government, curated by a group of councillors who side against “aspirational but unimplementable” political projects, and is concerned first and foremost with how people experience the city – that is to say, a renewed emphasis on public safety, standards of cleanliness, and rejuvenated streetscapes.
Plans to achieve these objectives range from an increase in wheelie bins across the city to the introduction of street wardens on select streets in central Dublin. While the implementation of street wardens have previously been left largely unexplored in Ireland, there is precedent for this in the UK – and Geoghegan envisages them as a bridge between an Garda Síochána and city cleaners.
They’ll be tasked with “positively promoting the street that they’re supporting”, and will act as “ambassadors for their street”. Such wardens will be a highly visible presence in the city centre, Geoghegan promises.
Change perhaps comes in the wake of the pandemic, which witnessed a visible rise in anti-social behaviour and crime in Dublin’s city centre. Particularly since the Dublin Riots in November of last year – a tipping point for many – this issue has accelerated to the forefront of many people’s worries.
For his part, Geoghegan has met with the current Garda Commissioner and relayed his desire for an increased police presence in Dublin. However, he may surprise some with his ability to compartmentalise this issue; recognising that young people, particularly teenage boys, get an unfair reputation for being ‘troublemakers’ in urban areas, he argues that this perception of trouble is in fact a consequence of the lack of services provided for young people in town.
“It’s important that we don’t scapegoat young people”, he said, “young people are allowed to hang around town. They’re allowed to just be young in town. But what people don’t want, and what they don’t feel comfortable with, is harassment”.
This sentiment also provides welcome context for his hope to rejuvenate the city centre – and the role that he sees young people playing in this effort. Particularly focusing on Dublin’s North Georgian Core, Dublin City Council has plans to radically change the experience of people living, working, and commuting throughout the city.
“If we don’t get young people into the city centre, frankly, we’re just not going to improve its outlook”, says Geoghegan when discussing the plans to revamp artistic spaces, promote quintessentially continental ‘above the shop’ living, grant permission for a bowling alley near St. Stephen’s Green, and further pedestrianise the city centre – starting with Parliament street.
Being relatively young himself at 39 years old, he may be able to claim to be more in touch with young people than his colleagues could. This argument is made all the more convincing when he asserted that “there’s more to Dublin than Copper Face Jacks. I mean, it’s a very important nightclub – don’t get me wrong.”
Moving to a more serious situation, he appeared keen to discuss the recent violent protests that have taken place in Coolock – a suburb on Dublin’s Northside that elects councillors to Dublin City Council – bringing up the topic on his own accord, just five minutes into the sit down interview.
Community consultation regarding social integration is oftentimes the go-to discussion item in political circles whenever notable, and sometimes violent, protests of this ilk come to prominence in Irish society.
Geoghegan emphasised that Dublin City Council must “focus on the areas where this is happening, focus on what the needs of the community are, and do a lot of listening”, adding that people with genuine concerns who are open to discussion “have an entitlement to be heard”.
“There’s a serious want of leadership in terms of supporting what I would describe as the middle ground”, he claimed, before going further by stating that there is a vacuum of communication in the community, which will naturally lead to high levels of misinformation and disinformation. This was particularly damaging in Coolock, where disinformation spread regarding the unfolding protests at the proposed factory site to temporarily house refugees..
Turning his focus to Dublin City Council itself, he stated that “depending on your perspective, there were a number of local councillors, albeit a small [amount], who were elected essentially on a mandate built around anti-immigration sentiment”, labelling this as “quite worrying”. He further stated that these councillors “are using their elected power in a way that is actually accentuating the division in our city”. For him, this is “a form of white nationalism”.
Furthermore, he somewhat rejected the notion that traditionally working class communities have been tasked with an unfair share of the issue of integrating and accommodating asylum seekers in Dublin. This is at odds with Sinn Féin’s position, whose President Mary Lou McDonald suggested last month that wealthier areas should accommodate more asylum seekers.
In response, Geoghegan pointed to an “all adult single male facility in the middle of Ranelagh” and Rathmines, as well as a family centre in Ballsbridge. He did recognise, however, that “the spread should be right across the Irish state”, adding that “it’s not appropriate to have a high concentration of any type of tenure in one area”.
This last sentiment speaks to a larger and more radical ideology that Geoghegan holds. While discussing the need to revamp parts of Dublin city centre, particularly in relation to the rampant problem of dereliction, he went down a road perhaps unfamiliar, or unpopular, to the regular Fine Gael voter.
He favours a “use it or lose it” policy when it comes to private landlords allowing their properties to fall into ruin, rationalising this with Dublin City Council’s ‘meanwhile-use leases’ in which buildings can be quickly converted for a 12 month basis.
He thus proposes “[imposing] as much pressure we have at our disposal, legal or otherwise, to force private landlords with nothing taking place in their buildings to offer up their buildings”.
If this tactic remains unsuccessful, he argued that “we need to go down a much more radical approach of CPOing (compulsory purchase orders) to acquire some of the vacant and derelict buildings in our city centre”.
In his relatively short career as a politician thus far, Geoghegan has shown promise as the future of Fine Gael. In the same generation as Simon Harris, he displays a willingness to pursue new ideas while also being fairly rooted in the establishment policies.
This, however, may struggle to convince those outside of Dublin 4’s hinterland that this is the way forward. Although Sinn Féin’s path to power has seen many a roadblock in the past year or so, the current standing in Dublin City Council shows a desire for reform – with a proposed ‘progressive alliance’ on the council falling just short of a majority following the Labour Party’s withdrawal from talks over the Local Property Tax.
As Lord Mayor of Dublin, Geoghegan has prioritised a “back to basics” approach on a city which can sometimes struggle to get the bare necessities right. To fashion this approach as a policy driven by ideology, however, could prove to be a stretch to anyone outside the Mansion House.
