Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I sympathise with the witnesses. Looking at the report, I was a little disappointed when I got the recommendations of the citizens' assembly because I expected it to be more detailed, complex and thought-out. That is one of the challenges. All of us are, or have been, practitioners in the local government space and understand the ether. It is difficult for people who are outside to understand all the complexities. There are recommendations that primary and community healthcare and primary and secondary education should be devolved to the directly elected mayor. Even the Department of Education does not run education completely. Schools are all devolved and have separate legal identities and so on. I was disappointed with those recommendations.

Let us take, for example, traffic. The difference between this and the Limerick Bill is that this is a metro mayor and involves multiple local authorities. I agree with Ms Farrelly that we should retain those identities. I wonder how it might work. Instead of the arrangement being like that of a Secretary General and a Minister, the situation would be that there would be the directly elected mayor and the director of traffic from each of the four local authorities. How do the witnesses anticipate that working? What role would the chief executive have in that relationship? In that specific area of traffic, will our guests talk about some of the concerns they have about the local authorities connecting with the directly elected mayor in respect of stuff for which the local authorities are already responsible?