Mr. Des Dowling:

I will start and other colleagues may contribute. With regard to the overall models, as I touched on earlier we drew inspiration from these rather than stating a definitive model exists which will fit in Ireland. We participate in the Council of Europe which comprises very different experiences and we have looked further afield. The manager system as we have it came from the United States. We look at a variety of models. The previous Green Paper set out some of these at length, in terms of harvesting previous work done. However, when it came to it we were more guided by the variety of submissions made from within the country and the key issue has been to try to reconcile the viewpoints on town-based and county-based approaches. As I stated, perhaps the way the municipality system works in France supports this. Ultimately, we have had to develop an approach which is unique to here.

Some of the other questions touch on the benefits of various forms of local administration - we will discuss Waterford later - and the idea of local identity, whether it be with a town or city, and trying to incorporate these into a model of governance which would work in Ireland. The best answer I can give is that while we drew inspiration from various approaches and from looking further afield, none of them translate directly into the Irish context. We have tried in the programme to put an emphasis on the elected member, and we drew inspiration from foreign models which seek to emphasise this. The question of how to enhance this will ultimately be a matter for the members themselves over time. We want to ensure members have as many tools as possible available to them.