Mr. Paul Lemass:

There would be through the county elections, as it currently stands. If there was a separate corporate body called the town council, that would be an independent body running its own affairs. We do not see that as compatible with a system where the entire county is covered by municipal districts where there is subsidiarity and devolved decision making at municipal district level. We accept that some of the local electoral areas are very big. The last terms of reference for the local electoral areas specified that they would have to have from six to ten members. The terms of reference in this proposal allow for a lower number of members per electoral area. That enables smaller electoral areas to be drawn. However, the current system does have devolved decision making from the county to the municipal district within a single corporate body.

If it is proposed to introduce 50 or 60 separate corporate bodies, they would have to establish their own separate corporate structures. The governance and democratic processes associated with them would be independent of the county council. The elections could be run at the same time but they would be independent corporate bodies. That is a bit of a challenge.

We accept that the system is not perfect. However, we have consulted extensively with elected members. We ran a survey in 2015 in which surveys were sent out to all 949 elected members. More than 500 returned the survey. Only 3% called for the return of town councils. The vast majority recognised that municipal districts were working well and a significant number observed that they need time to bed down. I accept fully that there were comments regarding the budgetary processes. That is something we are working on. However, there was no major call for the reversion to town councils. That is what the elected members in the field have been telling us and we had responses from more than 500 of them. We also met the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, recently. It reiterated that it is not calling for reversion to town councils. It would like to see the strengthening of the municipal districts and to see this process run the full term.

As for the example given of an engineer covering a town, if in the past an engineer covered the town and a road scheme was proposed, the town council - because its authority was for the town alone - would make comments and set priorities for the town itself. However, because the town is now part of a municipal district, it is possible to take the entire stretch of road throughout the district and to consider where the priorities are within the entire budget for the entire road across the entire district. That could potentially strengthen the amount of resources going into the town, depending on where the priorities are. Municipal district members currently have a say in these matters as part of the schedule of municipal district works.

Regarding town centre investment, our understanding is that quite large investments have been announced for Navan and Tralee in recent years which seems to suggest that the revenue raising capacity at county level and the ability to put financial proposals together is strengthened when one has a stronger corporate body at county level, enabling one to develop such proposals. This is also evident in Limerick, where an announcement was made recently regarding very significant borrowing to develop the county.