Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Comprehensive Action Programme for the Reform of Local Government: Discussion

3:45 pm

Photo of Ned O'SullivanNed O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Chairman took me a little by surprise there. I welcome the delegation and thank Mr. Dowling for his presentation. Is it fair to say that this policy, as enunciated by Mr. Dowling, has been in the process of being developed for the past ten or more years and that the officials' predecessors in the Department have been generally working towards this outcome? Is that one of the reasons we have seen a steady diminution and devolution of responsibilities from town councils to county councils in terms of water services and so on?

Mr. Dowling is no doubt aware that we in Ireland have almost the smallest local authority operation in the whole of the EU in that each elected representative in Ireland at local level is elected by approximately 2,500 people on the register of electors, as opposed to approximately 1,000 in Denmark and significantly fewer than that in France. Bearing that knowledge in mind, how does Mr. Dowling make sense of a drastic swingeing reduction in the number of elected members and a reduction in the number of local authorities and assemblies? I cannot figure that out nor the rationale behind it unless it is a straightforward cost-cutting method and, if it is, I ask him to step forward and say so.

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