Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Deputy Cassells and thank him for coming. Rather than questions, I have some comments to make. We are dealing here with the Local Government (Establishment of Town Councils Commission) Bill 2017. I do not think we have local government anywhere in this country. Rather, we have local administration. That includes city councils, county councils, municipal districts and anything which we pass off as local government. I include in this what was envisaged under the Putting People First programme of 2012, that massive document which is just paper. Half of it has not been implemented. It is very important to make that point. We need to look at the overall structure of local governance and local government because we do not have any such thing. We have local administration.

I wish to raise a number of key issues. We have a weak local government system and we need to acknowledge that. I am all in favour of subsidiarity and making decisions on the ground in communities. That may be happen through representative councils, residents' associations or any form of engagement and consultation with groups of people who are concerned with their community and want to make it a better place to live, work and play. That can only be positive and we must encourage it. Often in politics we tend to keep that space to ourselves and keep people outside. If they are not in the political system, we do not seem to think they have a valid contribution to make to communities and that is something we ourselves all need to address.

This question goes back to the function of local government. It also touches on the issue of devolved powers to local government. Coming in here a year ago, I thought I would be meeting and talking to people who were really seriously interested in devolved powers. The parties in the political establishment do not want to devolve powers to democratically-elected people even within their own party structures. That is saying something. The relationship between central government and local government is always challenging and while there must be a certain amount of central control, there must also be subsidiarity.

The big issue is really the financial autonomy of local government. People must have the capacity, the ability and the preparedness to pay local taxes for local services. I have always advocated for a local council tax. I never apologise for that. I do not agree with the local property tax, which I think is a grossly unfair and inappropriate tax. However, I fully advocate a local council tax for council services. That is another issue. Unless we address the issue of funding for local government, this Bill, or any reform of local government is not going to go anywhere. It is very important to say that.

I commend the Oireachtas Library and Research Service. It prepared a research document which we all received, namely, a detailed scrutiny pre-hearing briefing paper. It is excellent. I only had a brief look at it this morning but it is worth mentioning.

I wish to respond to one or two points in Deputy Cassells's address to us today. He said that local democracy works best when public representatives for the area have proper powers to deliver the best results for those they represent. We all agree with that and it is worth saying again.

In conclusion, I am fully supportive of the Bill. However, unless we address the issue of funding for local government and devolved powers by the Government and all of the political establishments in these Houses, we are not going to make much progress. That said, I wish Deputy Cassells well and he has my full support.