Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the witnesses. As has been said, it has been very informative. The lord mayor touched on diversity. That is key to local government and we have discussed it at this committee. I know the report is only being launched today but it is something this committee needs to feed into because we need diversity in politics, specifically in local politics. It is timely that we have such a report coming from the witnesses' good office and we can work on that.

The submission regarding women has come up time and time again here. Obviously, we want more women in politics and that is important. I mentioned the survey of women councillors the last time. We have many councillors who are retiring for one reason or another. We need to have that survey and this committee needs to play a vital role in making that happen.

The matter of hybrid meetings has fallen both ways here so far. We have people saying that they do not want hybrid meetings and then, for very good reasons, the witnesses suggested today that we need more hybrid meetings. We need to tease it out a little more. The witnesses have given very valid reasons for why we need hybrid meetings.

Mr. Henchy spoke about untimely delays in funding. It has come up in discussions here. Maybe if he gives us examples of that, we can feed those into our report. It is something we get from councillors and many councils.

In response to Mr. Edge on the matter of councillors being close, as an ex-councillor, I know this too. We need to get local democracy back to local people. Maybe to expand on that, people are coming in and making decisions for Mr. Edge's area who are not from the area, when he knows exactly what is going on on the ground. As I say, he is on the ground. It is something that this report should reflect continuously and constantly. We need democracy close to the people and that is what the witnesses do daily.