Dr. Aodh Quinlivan:

That is an ongoing battle even though many businesses in towns saw their rates go up after the abolition of town councils. I accept completely the point about age and wisdom. The point also concerns town councils being an avenue for younger people and different generations to come through. Ideally, perhaps the town council should be as apolitical as possible. We could have a long argument about the balance of powers between chief executives and councillors. We probably need a rebalancing. It is probably also fair to say that some elected members abdicate their powers. While many of them would say that they should have more powers vis-à-visthe chief executive, some of them would run a mile if they got those powers, but that is a slightly separate issue.