Major of Limerick John Moran has called on the Government to provide clarity on legislation governing the functioning of his office, amid reports of tensions between him, and local councillors and officials.
Mr Moran became the country's first directly elected mayor less that two years ago.
Speaking on RTÉ's Prime Time, Mr Moran acknowledged that there were "teething problems" associated with the role which "could have been avoided".
Asked about reports of rows between himself and council officials, Mr Moran said:
"I think the rows are caused by the fact that that the mayor is fully dependent on the Director General to allocate resources to carry out the work that the mayor, or indeed, the Councils would want to actually fulfill.
"And when you have an under resourced local authority...you're inevitably going to have allocation rights and the rest of things that come with that. It can be done very differently, and it is done differently in other cities," Mr Moran added.
He said he did not believe it was fair of the Department of Housing and Local Government to be "washing its hands on this issue".
"We've asked the Department for interpretation of what the actual legislation that they wrote was intended and how it was intended to operate in various different factual situations. And they haven't been willing to present us with that. And I think that's not necessarily fair on Limerick," he said.
Last month, Tánaiste Simon Harris said the Government would launch of review of the office of Limerick's directly-elected mayor, but Mr Moran said he would like to get clarity before this takes place.
"If we can actually get the clarity on the legislation, even pending the review, life gets a lot simpler," he said.
