Dr. Brian Hughes:

Dr. Skehan, whose section I have not had time to read out yet, very much pays attention to how centralised the Irish governance system is. Therefore, in terms of subsidiarity, it is a question of how much more decision-making can be handed down to these three new regional authorities. It is quite an interesting one because as the Chairman said, it has not happened yet. Table 2 in my handout and PowerPoint presentation shows the 2011 and 2016 populations of the three regional authority areas. It shows that despite the best efforts in the way they are divided up, there is still a very big imbalance in population and growth achieved between 2011 and 2016, in the 2016 population share and, most importantly, in the population density per square kilometre. If these regional assemblies are set up, there will be a huge task for Government to try to ensure that resources are divided up in a way that gives the best national return but at the same time does not ignore each of these three regional assemblies.