Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and the Minister of State for his time this afternoon. I will be brief in my contribution. I did not speak on this Bill in the Chamber. However, I attended all the consultations held in Galway. I do not like to come under the shadow of anybody, and certainly not under the shadow of Cork. I would like us to have our own entity, to be out on our own and to have a proper debate and discussion. We owe it to the citizens of Galway, to our elected representatives, namely, the councillors, and to the Oireachtas Members. Having us included here is not good enough for the people of Galway. I reject the idea that this should be allowed to happen.

Deputy Grealish has put it correctly. "Starved" is the word we would use in terms of what has happened to Galway. It has been starved of funding for years. It is going on since 1996. We were very fortunate to meet Department officials earlier this year. They were wonderful in explaining to us the breakdown in terms of where it went wrong. There were 530 separate accounts all rolled into a number of accounts. Everything got pulled in together. The trouble was that when that happened, we saw Mayo take the lead ahead of us and we got left behind. When one looked at Galway and at Mayo, the only thing that was different was a Taoiseach. Let us call a spade a spade here. That was when we started to unravel, and I am not afraid to say it. We are underfunded, under-resourced and do not have enough staff. That is what keeps jumping out in the report. Professor Eoin O'Sullivan did a very comprehensive report.

Deputy Grealish is right. He has never heard me say whether I am for or against the merger, and I will still not say. I will say that we need to get our ducks in a row. We need to fund the council and put a proper strategy in place. I live in Portumna and when this strategy was being drawn up, I asked if they could put us in with North Tipperary because we would be far better off. Galway is made up of three counties in one. There is the east, the west and the city. We are poles apart. What Deputies Ó Cúiv and Connolly talk about is totally different from what I experience in Portumna, Gort, Athenry and Tuam. Having us all under the one remit, scares the living dickens out of councillors, such as Ivan Canning in Portumna. He reckons no money will ever make it to Portumna. He is probably right. I am not going to rule that out, however. I keep saying to the Minister of State that I have an open mind on the whole concept. Unless I see funding going to councillors and unless we start with the money, I will have a serious reservation on it. I will doubledown until I see a commitment on money.

My last request is to take Galway out of the Bill and give it its own entity and allow us to have a proper debate in the Chamber. I want to work with the Minister of State not against him.