Mr. John A. Moran:

I am sure at the moment there are people in my old Department and others saying here comes the former gamekeeper turned poacher, in terms of what I am about to say. However, there are two tension at play here. There is the tension between central government and local government and then there is a geographical one between what happens in Dublin and what happens in the regions, and how to accommodate those. People are often afraid of change, as I said in my submission. Fundamentally, the people of Limerick were promised something and it is now up to the legislators, not the unelected officials, to take cognisance of that. I commend Mr. Tim O'Connor's report. It is a balanced way of looking at it. Anything in that report that is not in the legislation should be questioned seriously. We should ask why it is being omitted and not put through now. It is the responsibility of the democratically-elected representatives of the Oireachtas to drive that through and not just say "No" because as the Senator said, it can then be applied as a model that is well road-tested for Waterford, Cork, Galway, Dublin and indeed probably other counties as well.