Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We circulated as an attachment the populations of all the towns that would be captured by a population base of 5,000. It is a two-page list of towns starting with Arklow and ending with Youghal that would meet the threshold. One would not exclude any town in it. That is the reasoning behind it.

On the other questions, the directly elected mayor is not encompassed in my proposal. I do not have a fixed view on it and I would be interested to hear other people's views. If a town such as Wexford, Drogheda or Navan has a directly elected mayor, how does that impact on the other councillors in the area? If there is a five-year term and there is a powerful single individual, it diminishes the others. I do not have a fixed view on whether that is necessarily a good or bad thing. That is why it is not part of this, although I tabled a parliamentary question this week to the Minister to ask if that is intended. These plebiscites will take place in the major cities and I have received a great deal of correspondence asking if they will be rolled out to the larger towns. I do not know whether that is a good or a bad thing.

Deputy O'Dowd is always a great advocate for Drogheda, and rightly so, and I do not disagree with anything he said. A big issue that we must get our heads around is the power between the executive and the elected members. That is very difficult when there is such a disparity of capacity in terms of people who are part-time, not full-time-----