Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If one thought that the Putting People First reforms were a good idea, then one would not support this Bill. Many of us are supporting this Bill because we did not support those reforms in the first instance. When something is not functioning well, we have a terrible habit in this State of scrapping it and devolving the powers upwards. Nobody was saying during the debate we had earlier, including Deputy Cassells who has produced the Bill, that we want to return to the status quo. Nobody was saying that system was perfect either. The process of the commission as outlined in the legislation would actually give us an opportunity to tease through some of the issues and to implement reform in a better way than is currently the case.

We have talked a lot about municipal districts but those of us who were in big urban councils had area committees and while the statutory functions are not the same, they work in the same way. When the South Dublin County Council budget was being put together, all the expenditure that related, for example, to the roads or housing programmes in the Clondalkin local electoral area were discussed and informally agreed at the area committee. We did not have the statutory function to be able to decide that but clearly a good manager and a good director of service brought that in and sought consensus so that when the final budgetary package in the estimates was agreed, it had already gone through that local decision-making process. That is not on a statutory footing but that is what happens. That is not the same as what this Bill is seeking to do in terms of designated towns. I think that area committee system works very well and that is clearly what is going to happen with the municipal districts. However, that working well does not address the core issues around the towns and the very specific sets of issues around towns and the value of having a sub-county level of governance that deals with those town centres. One can have both of these things if one designs it very well. I am interested in hearing whether Mr. Lemass, as one of the people who designed and is overseeing the implementation of the municipal districts, sees them as operating any differently from the current area committees in the urban councils, notwithstanding the statutory differences in terms of how they are set up. I ask him to outline how he sees the municipal districts developing into the future. If they are to be given stronger statutory powers, is there a plan to do the same for the area committees in the larger urban councils?

The second issue is the thorny question of funding. Mr. Lemass mentioned €30 million as a cost. Back in 2014, when the proposed reforms were being put in place, we were told that the savings would be in the region of €15 million to €20 million per year.

Now the figure is €30 million. I presume, however, that a fair amount of that €30 million is currently being spent in the county councils. Therefore, if there were devolution, some of that €30 million would be relocated. It cannot just be €30 million in addition because some of the functions of the town councils were absorbed. Do the officials have a breakdown of how much of the €30 million is being spent in county councils? How much is new expenditure? When Deputy Alan Kelly was Minister, he said an operational review was to be established in 2015 to consider the savings. When he was asked about this in parliamentary questions at the time, he was never able to state the actual saving. Now that we have had at least two years of changes, could we have more details on this?