Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses, who were very well spoken. I have two observations. The Lord Mayor, Councillor de Róiste, concentrated on this a good bit, but it was referenced by all the witnesses. It is the whole idea of building communities and strengthening them. There are a myriad of reasons for the growth of the far right and we could all talk all day about them, but among the big reasons is the death of old communities. People had their own local community and they felt a part of it. It was their raison d'être and their whole existence. Then suddenly new people come into it, the thing gets skewed from their perspective and that sense of security, that sense of community, goes. That is a critical thing in the growth of the far right, in my view. There are a hundred other reasons, of course, but that is one of them. Consequently, it is important on that level, and on every level, to build communities and get that sense of community. I mean that old neighbourly thing, the big meitheal thing in a community sense, which existed in old Dublin and in rural Ireland. It is about that being recreated.

The second aspect is the inverse of what the founding fathers of America said. They said they wanted no taxation without representation. The converse is true in our case. Until councils are courageously collecting tax and courageously spending it and taking that on board, there will be no local democracy.