Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ta fáilte roimh gach duine atá anseo. It is great to have this interaction. In fairness, Deputy Howlin probably dealt with the first issue I was going to deal with, which is the weakness of our local government. Certain powers lie with us or with the Executive, and not with local representatives. Beyond that, there is a general under-resourcing of those areas for which there is a responsibility.

Solidarity for the Northern Ireland protocol has been stated and I add my voice to that.

We need to follow up on Councillor Murphy’s proposal to have an EU affairs officer at each local authority. If we need to bring in representatives of the County and City Management Association, CCMA, or of some other body, perhaps that is a job of work we should consider doing. What have been the advantages where such an officer has been in place?

To follow up on the conversation we have had previously on the distance from politics felt by the people, it is not only at a European level. That distance is major at this point in time and it has left a vast vacuum. I would say we, and that includes all of us, were not the most representative group of people in the room at the Conference on the Future of Europe. If public meetings were held anywhere across Ireland, and I imagine throughout Europe, a range of issues would have come to the fore that did not come to the fore at that forum. I refer specifically to the drugs issue, drug addiction and crime. I can point to the number of times those issues are spoken about in these Houses and at local level. What item of work can be done from the point of view of bridging that gap? Europe has sold itself to the vast majority of us - particularly those of us here who may have had a difficulty with it at the time of the financial crash - in dealing with the pandemic, the Ukrainian crisis and, hopefully, the cost-of-living crisis and what mitigations Europe can provide in that context. What item of work can we do to bridge that gap with people? We have skirted around some of that issue. I acknowledge it is not the simplest of questions to answer.