Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am concerned some measures have started to work and that we might be going backwards with some of what is included in the legislation. I am not an enthusiast for the institutional arrangements which have been devised. There continues to be too close a relationship between the Custom House, the Minister and local authorities and I would rather see a greater disconnect. I do not doubt reform is needed.

The Dublin and mid-east regional authorities had a positive influence on setting regional planning guidelines and I would favour an expansion of this role. How members are nominated will be seriously problematic as the process will not provide the diversity required. We need all voices on it. I saw how the regional authority changed the culture with regard to development plans in the local authority on which I served as we had the national spatial strategy, regional guidelines and local guidelines. It made people consider matters more strategically. I am concerned the nominating process will reduced diversity rather than increasing it. I am interested to hear what the witnesses have to say on this. We can see the relationship between land use and transportation strategies but there is quite a fragmented approach to some of the issues with regard to municipal district councils as opposed to county councils.

Another issue is how people participate. Having been a member of a county council and a town council, for approximately 20 years in both cases, I felt there were far more opportunities to involve people at town level than at county level. There seems to be a mismatch, to which the witnesses referred, with regard to local community development committees, LCDCs, as there is only one per county unless the Minister allows more, but local development happens at a lower level than this. I do not see where flexibility in this engagement will happen, and I state this from a citizen's perspective rather than a public representative's perspective. I am interested to hear what the witnesses have to say on this. What might we bring by way of amendments to try to change this?

I take the point about the name, because the common understanding of people with regard to the word "development" tends to be "economic development". We must broaden this and I support the idea of changing the name from this point of view.

The structures and institutional arrangements will change and obviously we will not have county development boards. Some of them worked and others did not, and it is exactly the same with the SPCs. The new arrangements will change the dynamic with regard to who would be nominated. I ask the witnesses to tell us how they see this playing out. Institutional arrangements will change whereby there will not be nominations to bodies such as county development boards. The same number of SPCs will exist and there will be local community development committees and enterprise committees. I presume the witnesses would wish to be represented on all of these elements. How do they see the new institutional arrangements working from their perspective? How do they believe this will play out?