John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On what Deputy Perry said, nobody will support bad housekeeping by local authorities. They are expected to collect their rates, to do their business and get sorted out. We have had many other Departments in here, for example, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which did not collect their debt for years on end. They did not issue invoices and they had no leases. A focused effort had to be made to get them back on track. We had another issue where SUSI overpaid €4.1 million to grant recipients. Its suggestion was just to write it off. Deputy Perry is highlighting the need for someone to attempt to restructure the financial situation in Sligo.

Part of the Department's mission statement is to improve the lives of citizens and communities. I suggest it puts that first and that whatever cuts or reorganisation are necessary should start from the top in Sligo. The people hardly created the situation and from a public representative's point of view, the last thing we want to see is libraries and other resources provided by local authorities being cut, particularly now that people are using them to a greater extent. Members, like me, who were on local authorities for some years never felt we had the power to do anything because the City and County Managers' Association is a pretty powerful outfit and it calls the shots for public representatives.

In the opinion of many in the medieval city of Kilkenny, who can say Cromwell was there, this new piece of local government legislation has done more damage to that geographical area than Cromwell did when he was there. That is the feeling of ordinary people. If the Department's mission statement is to improve the lives of citizens, it must take that into consideration. I did not ask Mr. Heffernan, because it was the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, who made the comment, but it is clear that on the likes of the issues raised by Deputy Perry and other issues we have raised here, everyone is pushing local government further and further away from them because no one seems to want to account for it. That is why we do not have a central audit office. I do not know why that continues. That point was raised by Deputy Perry. This new national thing that has to report is just a veil to cover up the criticism of the Department and how its audit functions are delivered on. This public debate is not happening at any level within local government where issues of the day, or issues that have been discovered through audit, are debated and resolved and people know what went on and what is being done to correct it.

While not wanting to speak for Deputy Perry, that is why he is having to make the case here. I ask Mr. Heffernan to give his view on the debate so far and what Deputy Perry has said about the complete destruction of local government in terms of the democratic structures and the methods of reporting. Having set up this whole new project, one year on there is no real analysis of how it has operated for the past 12 months.