Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take my slot and if anybody wants to come in for a final round we will welcome that. Only to provide balance, because I do not disagree with anything anyone said - the lack of detail from the citizens' assembly is really disappointing because a lot of people hoped it could be the platform to bring this forward. The alternative could be worse as well. The Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) Bill 2023 proposes that every county will have the power to initiate a directly elected mayor except the counties in Dublin. There could be a situation in which many counties have directly elected mayors, which is in the current legislation for Limerick, but Dublin, specifically, would be excluded. That is a concern of mine. I agree with Deputies Cian O'Callaghan and Duffy. I was in local government for ten years and nobody can tell me it is not a completely broken system. It does not work for the public or the councillors. Effectively, there are four chief executives with unprecedented powers and national agencies with no specific focus in Dublin. Our current system does not work and we need to change it; I accept all of the issues raised because they are now an impediment to change. We have to make sure we get around them.

I accept it is almost an unsophisticated term because it is like the solution to all of our problems but the three reasons everyone articulates for a directly elected mayor are to champion issues which emerge early in the city in order that the national government may resolve them, the second is to co-ordinate the local authorities and their efforts and the third is to be a champion for funding directly to Dublin. We need all three of those areas. Ms Burke might recall that she and I sat at a meeting with LinkedIn in 2016 with the founder; it was speculating about its new office. I have spoken publicly about this. Its biggest issue in 2016 was that it was struggling to get accommodation for its staff. That was in 2016. There was an emerging issue in Dublin. There have been seven or eight Lord Mayors since that meeting. If one person had a serious chunk of time to work with the chamber and other ones, they could have championed a solution earlier. Energy requirements in South Dublin County Council are a massive issue relating to the huge enterprise attracted to South Dublin County Council, yet it was competing with national agencies to try to respond to local issues. There is also the issue of an airport link to the airport - the biggest asset in Fingal - yet national agencies have not responded. We are all Dubliners in the room, whether we are from Dublin or not, we are all Dubs - let us use a non-geographically-specific term. We are not getting the services and response we need from national government, no matter who is in power, because of our structures. The big challenge of doing nothing is that we go backwards. I accept Ms Burke's proposal of the straw man. A Green Paper or straw man in which we could start to dissect elements would be beneficial. I would be very reluctant to see the citizens' assembly proposal go to a referendum because it could either be rejected, which would be the end of local government reform for 20 years, or worse, it could be adopted.

There are not many questions in there.

If the witnesses could speak about the challenges of the current system, it might help us or inspire us to keep going. The Sutton-to-Sandycove cycle route is a big project. Would that have been delivered if there had been a champion for it? Would we have had greater desecularisation of schools in Dublin? The Department of Education did not want to move on that for a long time. It was not an issue in many parts of the country, but it was an issue in Dublin. There is definitely a gap there. It is not necessarily about the structure. Where are the gaps at the moment? What are the issues on which the witnesses are advocating? I know the PPNs are very strong advocates and I am sure they have many issues.