John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know the ins and outs but I know when I look across the country and see other counties where the county town does well, and a good example is my own county, Kilkenny city is a strong county town and always has been. There was severe opposition to the abolition of Kilkenny Borough Council which was there for hundreds of years. It should not have been abolished and it should have been integrated properly within the county council structure and the review that is under way will, hopefully, achieve that. I hope we will do the same for Navan, ensure it has its own municipal district and have a beefed-up staff will be properly integrated into a unitary local government structure throughout the country, rather than returning to the old system where in certain towns with a town council, if someone received 30 or 40 votes, he or she would become a town councillor. I acknowledge town councils could have been abolished and others could have been kept but the principle of having one system of local government rather than trying a mishmash of two, which was what existed, was behind the change. We should make the changes necessary to ensure the reforms work well in practice.

Regarding financial autonomy, I do not want to go into too much detail on the variations in rates because a commercial rates Bill will be before the committee in a number of weeks, which will give autonomy to municipal districts to retain rates within the district if they choose to vary commercial rates and vacancy refunds as well. We are in strong discussions with several different Departments about the allocations they are making to local authorities, including the Department of Rural and Community Development, which provides up to €40 million under two schemes. The villages and towns selected for those schemes should be decided by the municipal district members. There is no reason for it to go to the plenary session of the council. The Department of Rural and Community Development is inclined to agree with us. We should be in a position to make that change. The funding provided by central Government to the local authorities could not, and should not, be devolved to the municipal district. In advance of the formation of the next municipal districts in May 2019, we want to ensure that the allocation that is given centrally to local authorities can be broken down much further to municipal districts. The rows about funding at the plenary session mentioned by the Deputy happen in many councils. Those decisions should be made at municipal district level. The plenary session should be about the wider policy issues for the entire local authority. That was envisaged in the legislation originally and some local authorities keep those funding questions for municipal district level. There needs to be standardisation across the board as to how funding matters are dealt with and how and what issues the plenary session of the county council should deal with.