Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is welcome that representatives from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage are coming in but there is a wide remit in that Department, including local government and there is quite a lot that requires scrutiny. We are all finding the meeting unsatisfactory. One can do very little in five or even 15 minutes and this is a gigantic area. We have to accept, even before they come in, that there will be a need for this to be on the work programme. It will probably take two sessions. One session would be to go back to the issue of housing but there are other issues related to this Department as well. Covid will have had an impact on the income for local authorities. There are issues around local property tax as a funding mechanism. As we start to look at work programmes, we need to look at the big-ticket items and that Department is one of them.