Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would not have agreed with many of the things the previous Minister, Mr. John Gormley, did but he brought in a cap of €4,700 per member of city and county councils, which was welcome. What the Minister is doing here makes a lot of sense. If we are to be honest about it, given the difficulties many councillors had trying to pay their own expenses and bills, many of them had to rely on conferences and so on to carry them through. That is the way it was. In the 1990s, when there was no representational payment or otherwise, that was the only way they could get a few pounds to keep going and to service the constituency.

If the Minister gets the balance right here, everything will okay. By all means tighten up this but in recognition of the reduced number of councillors - in some cases less than half the number of councillors in a county - and in view of the fact there will be larger areas and that we are trying to get people into local government and national government, will the Minister look at the monthly allowances for people where they are justified on the basis of the distances to the county hall and the increase in the size of areas? That should be done in a very transparent way. Councillors will be servicing larger areas and there will be fewer councillors on the ground. Will the Minister take that into consideration? I hope he will take that on board.