Mr. Paul Lemass:

In response to Senator Boyhan, if something is broken, we want to fix it. Our objective is to have the most effective form of local government. We believe in the huge potential for local government and we can see it happening in the enterprise support area and the community development function which work well in most local authorities. We would like to see more functions devolved to local authorities. This Department would be very supportive of increased devolution of functions to local authorities.

If our approach to the Bill appears a little negative, we want to understand the implications because we and the local authorities will be charged with implementing this and making it work. We have real concerns that putting this in place would be extremely challenging and extremely disruptive to other processes in train.

The Senator also mentioned community engagement and municipal district engagement with town teams and fora. We have recognised that. We will be making proposals for how town teams and fora engage formally with the municipal district structure in order that people are very clear on the initiatives that are taking place and the role of the municipal district in that.

I mentioned the survey of in excess of 500 local authority members and what it called for.

I wish to be clear that the objective of the reform was not to achieve a saving but was about reducing duplication and administration. I gave the example of all the corporate functions - that is only a small subset of them - that would need to be replicated five, six or seven times in some of the bigger counties. Counties Tipperary and Kildare could end up with seven town councils. Replicating all those corporate functions six or seven times would result in a significant cost increase. I reiterate that it would be additional cost of the order of a minimum of €30 million.

In response to Deputy Casey's questions, I read out some of the questions on the survey. On the suggestion that towns have suffered, the whole country has suffered from the economic decline. I would be concerned about conflating the introduction of municipal districts with the suffering of the towns. We are seeing investment in towns now and towns recovering under a municipal district structure. I am not sure if it is reasonable to conflate fully the issue of town decline with the introduction of municipal districts.

The Deputy asked about having the bins in Wicklow town emptied on Saturdays and Sundays. Budgets have to be agreed and priorities set. That is a reality of agreeing a budget in a local authority. If there were a town council, the people would still have to pay for the service. If bins are to be collected on Saturdays and Sundays, it has to be paid for, whether it is agreed through a town council or a county council.

There may not be what the Deputy perceives to be an adequate level of housing development in Bray. I know Greystones, however, and there is a building site on every corner there.