Mr. Aebhric McGibney:

To clarify, I have a draft of the legislation in front of me. Section 61 of the draft Bill requires that a resolution be passed by each of the four local authorities in Dublin. It is possible that three local authorities will be in favour of a directly elected mayor with strong powers but the opposition of the fourth defeats the proposal. The bar is very high in terms of the legislation.

We are happy to share our analysis of the legislation with the committee. A point was made about water supplies. Dublin faces particular problems with water and we would welcome an opportunity to speak to the committee about this subject on another occasion. There has been a delay in the provision of the alternative sources of supply that Dublin desperately needs. Dublin has 800 km of pipes older than 100 years and they need to be replaced. Some level of redundancy will need to be built into the system from an enterprise point of view, for industries that are heavily dependent on water and that would not be in Ireland without adequate water supplies.