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

I did not realise that Deputy Cassells was elected to the council in 1999. We started at the same time. The world has changed for councillors in the interim. I was a student at the time and I was extremely happy to get a cheque for a couple of hundred quid at the end of the month in order to keep my little Renault 19 on the road. The number of meetings we were obliged to attend was very different. The Deputy and I were present for the 100th anniversary of the introduction of local government in Ireland. The current system was introduced in 1899 and the centenary in 1999 really marked the end of an era. Many people the Deputy and I would have served with on councils in those days would have held their seats for 30, 40 or 50 years. They would not have been paid salaries, rather they just got a cheque for a small amount at the end of each month. Despite that, it was not always the wealthy or self-employed who served; it was often just the ordinary Joes who became local authority members.

The role of a councillor is such now that many employers are less than enthusiastic about allowing staff, particularly in light of the positions they hold in their places of employment, to serve on local authorities. One of the things that I hope will be included in the review is an examination of how it might be beneficial for employers to allow people to serve, particularly as there are a lot of people working for multinational companies. I am thinking of the guy who was elected with me in south Kilkenny in 1999 - Senator Grace O'Sullivan might know him - who was the manager of the warehouse of Bausch & Lomb in Waterford for 20 years. He found it horrifically difficult to get time off work. He is still on the council but he left his position with the company in question many years ago because he could not marry the two roles.

The Deputy is correct to state that it is not all about money. There are many other supports needed for councillors such as, for example, those relating to childcare and caring. Many councillors provide care for family members, whether it is their children or their parents. Whatever it is about the nature of people who are caring, they are sometimes attracted to the local authority role of, in effect, caring for their communities. What has also changed in the past 20 years is that there are some councillors now who talk a lot more about remuneration than there were in the past. Some 90% of councillors do not do it for the money but the other 10% do them a terrible disservice by whingeing about money all the time. That is not to say that there is not a case to be answered. That is why this is happening but sometimes it can cause rancour with the general public, which we are all here to serve. As I said, 90% of councillors do the job excellently but there are a few here and there who get the message a bit wrong.

In terms of the Deputy's statement on the treatment of councillors on social media. There is a broader discussion as to how public figures are treated on social media but he is correct that it is something that would make people think twice about standing for local election.

On the Deputy's next point, I made it clear from the start that, as well as remuneration, this is about softer supports for councillors, such as those provided by secretarial assistants and research assistants. Fingal County Council is the only local authority that provides these supports. I do not know if it does so across every one of its municipal districts but I know that it provides secretarial support to councillors. Equally, if a person is running from his or her job to a full council meeting at 3 p.m., he or she needs to know what is his or her reserve function regarding a particular aspect of policy that is being discussed. In that context, it would be a fantastically useful - for both councillors and the public - if there were the equivalent of parliamentary assistants within councils who could obtain the necessary information. When I attended council meetings 20 years ago, often the waters were a bit muddied and councillors had to feel their way through in order to find out exactly where they stood. Some of the older councillors had a method of putting the boot into some of the officials but that was not always necessarily the best way to operate.

On the question of whether there is a clear intention to implement the outcome, for me there very much is such an intention. It is no secret that this process has been delayed because the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform guards the purse strings very tightly. However, the Government has made a decision to proceed with the review and to have it implemented before the next local elections. The idea is to ensure that people who are considering standing in those elections will know, before the end of this year, what will be their remuneration package and what their role will involve. That is the intention behind the interim report. I do not know how much information, etc., Sara Moorhead will include in the interim report - knowing her, it will be a lot - but it will be the Government's job thereafter to implement her findings. There is no shortage of willingness on my part to deal with this issue, which has been kicked around for a long time now. We might as well take the bull by the horns at this point. Given that we are in the run-up to the next local elections, this is the opportune time to do so.