The mayor of where?

The Green Party has secured the idea of an elected mayor for Dublin before 2011 as part of the coalition with Fianna Fail. The idea is that we will have a strongman who will knock heads and get Dublin working as a unit.
It's a complete reversal of Green ideology which tends to favour consensus rather than strong men. The party itself didn't have a leader until 2001. But to be fair, the idea is to invigorate and empower local democracy. And so we will have, like New York and London, a directly elected mayor with executive powers.
The big problem is that there is no clue as to what the new mayor will be mayor of. The present mayor is elected by Dublin City Council and the problem is that Dublin City Council is nothing of the sort.
The present Dublin City Council covers around only half the population of County Dublin and leaves out huge swathes of the city itself such as Dún Laoghaire, Dundrum, Tallaght, Clondalkin, Lucan and Blanchardstown. If we are to have a Dublin City mayor, the whole city is going to have to be included or there is little point to the exercise.
This means serious local government reform in Dublin. The last major reorganisation in the city created the new counties of Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown. Their existence has not set the world alight and they command little local loyalty or identity.
The Programme for Government says nothing about all this but we know that the Green Party favours more local councils to go with the new stronger mayor. However, the last reorganisation was a major task in terms of legislation and logistics. We can't wait for that, we can't afford it and it's not necessary.
The new mayor should cover the whole of County Dublin and should be accountable to a new Dublin Assembly. District councils should be set up across Dublin to serve local areas. The present four local authorities should remain as municipal entities to provide services at an economic cost to the new assembly and the district councils. The number of representatives to these bodies should be small, perhaps 10 for local councils and 20-30 for the Assembly. There might be a case for growing a Dublin Assembly to a Greater Dublin Assembly to include very near urban areas such as Bray and Leixlip.
The people of Dublin would then have workable local government that would serve them on a citywide and local basis.
Finally, there used to be a class of character you would meet on the barstools of Ireland back in the 1980s who would declare that the solution to Ireland's problems was a dictatorship. The dictator would use force to implement the policies the guy on the bar stool agreed with. It was simple and cosy.
Some Green TDs cited the bould 'Red Ken' in London as an example of what a progressive strong mayor could achieve. This is slightly daft as there's no knowing what make of politician the electorate might favour. George Bush, Vladimir Putin, Robert Mugabe and even Adolf Hitler were elected too, you know.