Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 76:

In page 57, to delete lines 2 to 29 and substitute the following:“ “(1) (a) The elected council of each local authority shall form a committee, to be known as the corporate policy group and in this section referred to as the ‘policy group’.
(b) The membership of the policy group shall be assigned proportionately according to the d’Hondt method using the share of first preference vote received by each registered political party and the combined vote of all independent members at the preceding local authority election.
(c) For the purposes of this section, ‘independent member’ means any person elected to the council who is not a member of a registered political party.”,”.

There is no reason the d'Hondt method used for deciding the membership of various committees should not be applied throughout the local authority system. I do not know from where the requirement to treat registered political parties differently from independents and small parties with less than 20% of total membership comes. It is not democratic. It is unclear from subsection (c)(i) and (ii) which size a registered political party must be. Subsection (c)(i) refers to a figure of 20%. Does this threshold also hold in subsection (c)(ii)? What is wrong with a system of allocation based on proportionality following a democratic election? Under the provision, as worded, political parties will be treated differently from political groupings. One has a wide variety of groups at local level, including single groups consisting of small political parties and independents. Such variety is positive in terms of diversity. I strongly oppose the section, which is the reason for the amendment.