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

I thank the Deputy. I wish to acknowledge Ms Laura Mannion, who has done a significant amount of work on this in my area, as have Mr. O'Leary and Mr. Buggy, in terms of feeding through the subgroups and reflecting the wishes of women.

On illness benefit, my intention through the regulation is to have that administrative support. As I stated, I have encountered a few of the very difficult cases where that does, unfortunately, happen to local authority members.

As regards the duration for a person who is ill, it is 18 months. Essentially, the seat or vacancy would then terminate and the person would be deemed to have resigned after the 18 months.

As regards maternity leave, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, it is 26 weeks plus 16 additional weeks. The casual vacancy ends at that juncture and the councillor is automatically reappointed to the local authority. As the Deputy stated, that is important because these are democratically elected individuals. We are providing certainty for them in terms of carrying on their life by having a temporary substitute in place and their community represented for the period in question. The €230 per week is framed on 19 hours, approximately.

We are bringing in a significant number of additional supports. That is how we expanded the vouched scheme of expenditure for local authority members to bring in a number of areas that were not previously included. That is important because there were 114 local authority areas but that number dropped to 31, with a reduction to 949 councillors countrywide. The geographical areas councillors represent got far bigger and there are many statutory bodies they have to nominate onto, as well as non-statutory bodies and the public participation network, PPN. The role of a councillor now places significant demands on their daily lives, especially when going through the county development plan process, which is a minefield for councillors. They have to grapple with various issues and regulations when adjudicating on what is best for their area and providing that cornerstone document. We want to provide them with all the support we possibly can.