Mr. Dermot Lacey:

I fully agree with Deputy Ryan on the issue of leadership. However, that is a question that is often thrown at councillors by Oireachtas Members. It must be borne in mind that Oireachtas Members have shorn local councillors of powers over the last 15 years. Whenever powers are transferred to local councillors on difficult issues I will take a stand on tough issues. However, I would like councillors to be given back some of the nicer powers that have been taken from us during the last 15 years. The same point applies to Deputy Cowen's comment.

It is all very well saying that local authorities should do all these things. I am not trying to make a third-party point but local government funding has been decimated in the past 20 years. We do not have the funds to do the things we used to do. I did a calculation recently. If domestic rates still applied in Dublin, the city would be getting €220 million, while we get €63 million under the local property tax. That is the figure for one year alone and the gap is €160 million. It is all very well for people to call on us to do these things but they should give us the power and the resources to do so.

Financing comes in to the question of voids. Deputy Durkan sort of answered this question. One of the problems is that we do not have direct labour any more. If a council wants a job done, it has to go out to tender. We used to have painters, plumbers and electricians who could do these jobs. We do not have them anymore because of cutbacks.

The second issue was raised by Deputy Durkan as well. We have to apply departmental standards. Let us suppose a flat was absolutely perfect and the people who wanted to move in were perfectly happy with the way the previous tenant had it and would move in tomorrow morning if they could. Given our centralised system of government, the Department stipulates that a given apartment has to have a grey door or a kitchen in a certain corner and another door has to be a certain way. If we had the flexibility to allow people to live the lives they want to live, we could do turnarounds in days rather than months.