Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, everyone who owns land or whose family owns land is good at declaring an interest in advance. That is certainly the case in my local authority. However, this is more about an auctioneer, solicitor or architect who, when he or she is rezoning a field, does not know what will happen in the future. Some counties are large. I happened to be a representative in the geographically smallest local authority in the country. It was 8 miles long and 5 miles wide. In large counties, however, a councillor who is an architect or quantity surveyor could be rezoning land a long way from where he or she lives only to be asked in a year's time to submit a tender. The councillor would not have known of any future involvement. People need to be aware of this.

It is important that we acknowledge that this Bill is being introduced on foot of many issues, but people have not copped how administratively burdensome it will be for certain people in some types of industry through no fault of their own. They were elected. The only people who can zone land are councillors. I sat through three development plans while I was a member of my local authority. It is what they do. People might decide that they do not want to be councillors anymore because it will impact on their professions if, for example, they are civil engineers, quantity surveyors or the like. People need to be cognisant of this.

If someone is involved with land or owns land or if family members or other connected persons own land, of course that should be declared in advance and the councillor should remove himself or herself from the chamber. Technology has moved on. In the old days, people left the chamber and did not know what happened in the room afterwards. Now, most chambers are being webcast. All people need to do is watch on their phones or look into the next room to see what is happening at the meeting. So be it.

I thank the witnesses for attending but, on the administrative side, the Department does not even appreciate the additional reporting we all were obliged to do from 2014 on in terms of travel.

If, as I used to be, one happens to be a member of the AILG, a regional authority or assembly and a health forum, one has to declare the meetings one attends, even those for which one is not paid. A councillor cannot claim for theatre boards or drug task forces, but he or she still has to recuse himself or herself. The minute a councillor leaves something out, he or she could be caught. It might not be done deliberately. It might just be an administrative mistake, the councillor forgot about a meeting or a note of it did not go into his or her diary.

The level of administration and the amount of changing required every quarter if the material changes need to be appreciated by the Department and those who drafted the Bill. Most councillors are one-person operations. If they do not do it, it does not get done. There is a lot of work involved.

The process should be streamlined to make it easier. I do not understand why people have to declare assets themselves. If a councillor has a large loan, someone might say that he or she has debts of €3 million or €4 million and could be susceptible, although that is not guaranteed. That people have to count all of their assets constantly and tell SIPO what they have when Revenue, presumably, has access to most of that data seems burdensome. It is only privately declarable in any event, so what is the point?