COUNTY managers will be answerable to the Dáil's public accounts committee and there will be an end to the practice of internal investigations by local authorities, as part of reforms being planned by environment minister John Gormley.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, the Green Party leader said he envisaged a role for the Standards in Public Offices Commission (SIPO) in investigating serious complaints about local authorities.

Currently, if a complaint is made to a local authority about a councillor or an official, the county manager and the chairman of the council have a role in investigating the complaint. Gormley wants SIPO to deal with the complaints directly, investigating them as it sees fit. This role would move to an Electoral Commission, which will subsume SIPO when it is established. The protection of whistle blowers at local level will also be a key part of any reforms, the minister said.

Increasing the accountability of decisions made by county and city managers will also feature large.

Currently, the line of accountability for managers is to their councillors. But sources close to the minister say that because managers have executive powers and because projects are often funded directly from government and councillors don't have information on them, it can leave them in situations "where they're not really accountable at all".

Gormley also said that there was "an issue too which is of importance, which I've become very aware of. And that is how local authority contracts are conducted and scrutinised.

"In effect, there seems to me to be no political oversight of these contracts which have a contingent liability on the state. In other words if the contract doesn't work out, if there are difficulties with the contract, the state can sometimes end up paying for it," Gormley said.

"At a local level, you just have to ensure there is accountability. Right now at a local level, there is less accountability than at national level. And that's why we want to do something in the context of the white paper," he added.

The minister said he hoped to move on the establishment of an electoral commission "fairly rapidly". He envisaged it being established on a non-statutory basis first to report back on proposed reforms of the electoral system. "Once you have to go through legislation it's going to take much longer obviously. But they can report back, in accordance with the programme for government, within 12 months on the issues we've looked at," he said.

Asked about the likelihood of a change in the electoral system, Gormley said: "If it's at a national level that requires a referendum. A referendum on that issue would be interesting because you may indeed get people who would vote for a reduced Dáil; whether they would actually vote for a new system is another question. I think there is a lot to recommend in a new [electoral] system. I think the only way you could do that probably is to do it on a gradual basis. In other words, you could introduce that maybe at a local level first of all and see how that works out and then take it from there. "