Mr. John A. Moran:

I echo everything that has been said about all this. This is the opportunity to make a huge change that would apply not just to Limerick but to the whole of the way the country works. As I said in my statement, we kind of inherited this British system of there being no trust in the local 100 years ago and we have lived with that. As our population grows and our regional balanced development agenda becomes a reality, it is important we revisit that. That will not be done unless our Legislature imposes its will for it to be done, representing the fact that it needs democratic accountability. Limerick says it is up for this. It would be as good a test pilot as anywhere else I can think of in driving this through. As Ms Ryan said, I wish the committee the best and happy reading of the implementation report. Look what has happened. With a level of detail that was missing and some indications as to what would happen, the Government and the Departments went back to Limerick and asked, "What do you want?" Tim O'Connor led a huge consultation to get a balanced report that does an awful lot of the work. It just seemed ludicrous to me, reading the legislation, that we would have another forum to have another year or until 2024 to wait to move the powers and the budget we need to move today. We have had strong agreement on that. Now it is a case of just implementing it. We have had a wait of two and a half years. It sounds like we will not have an election until next year. That leaves the committee with more than enough power and, I might mention as a former Secretary General at the Department of Finance, an actual budget in October to implement any of the changes that need to be implemented such as to the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, allocations or anything else. I wish the committee the best.