Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Quinlivan for his comments. I am brave but I am not brave enough to say when the President will sign the Bill. Obviously, there is a very significant amount of work that needs to be done to get us to that juncture. Matters are still unpredictable. As I said at the start, the Dáil has been sitting only two days a week until recently. I spoke to the Attorney General about the Bill last week and he assured me that he will give the matter priority insofar as is possible. There is, however, legislation in respect of housing and other very important emergency legislation coming down the track. Much of this is already in the public discourse. I want to be careful when it comes to hanging my hat on a specific deadline.

I will say one or two things. In the first instance, we really want to get this right. We want to make sure the Bill we present to the Oireachtas is as complete as possible and that we ensure as much devolution of power as possible, reaching into all of those other Departments. Second, we want to get priority time in the Oireachtas. We have been assured that we will and I hope that will be the case. As I have said, there are risks to that but I hope that we will have something published for summertime. We will then be at the mercy of the Whip's office as to getting it through the Oireachtas. Speed is very important but it also very important to get it right. The risks of something going wrong are very high. We will work with the committee. The Cathaoirleach and the members have been very kind in prioritising this Bill. It is very important that I listen to the views of members of the committee, including members of all parties and Independent members, and take as many of them on board as possible. I am really committed to doing that. If anyone wants to have a meeting with me, I am very open to facilitating that.

With regard to the 69 recommendations, 38 are already included in the Bill. A few will be more difficult. I will not go through any of them at length. The recommendation regarding a recall provision is gone because the Attorney General has ruled it out. That is one of the 69 recommendations. In an earlier contribution, I made reference to the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and getting into banking and the Department of Finance. There are risks attached to that. That is part of the bigger picture. It will take a while to deliver something as ambitious as that. The implementation advisory group report is very ambitious. I thank the group for that because that is what we want. We really want blue-sky thinking when talking about a new office and that is what the group has provided. We have to get it down to a deliverable product. That is another issue that will take a little time to work on.

With regard to An Garda Síochána, the Garda Commissioner has specific rights with regard to budgetary matters and policing. That is paramount. It would be very difficult to give a directly elected mayor a say with regard to the requirements of the policing budget. We can use joint policing committees and other mechanisms to get around that.

Those are the kinds of difficulties involved. There are only a small number that will present real difficulty. Some 38 of the 69 recommendations are before the committee now. Another ten are partially before it and we are working on a further 11 as we embark on the legislative process. With the consent of the Houses, we hope to bring in amendments on Committee Stage as negotiations with the various other Departments progress. At the end, only a handful of recommendations will not have been addressed. We have to be open and honest about this. A handful will have to await the bedding-in of the office of the mayor before we can see how they might potentially be brought in at a later stage. These will take additional work at Government level.