Ms Mary Rose Burke:

We have long advocated for a directly elected mayor as a totemic figure and a focus for discussion on the deficits that are there at the moment. The functional area of the city is not keeping up with the challenges. One of those challenges is the number of people who choose to live in the city notwithstanding a political will to ask them to live somewhere else. We must respect and reflect where people choose to live. It is not unusual that people choose to live in their capital city. A number of years ago we did a project called the Dublin reputation survey which we circulated to this forum. We learned from that survey that particularly when it comes to a brand for Dublin both domestically and internationally there is no one person or one agency responsible for promoting Dublin in its entirety as a place to live, work, invest, study and raise a family. We see the need for one person to own that reputation and brand.

On housing, LinkedIn has its own difficulties in San José with housing and everything and so it is not unique to Dublin. Every capital city has this. I would not like to think that Dublin is failing as a city. It is more that it is a victim of its success and we need real political will to help it to maximise its potential and to move things faster. Arguably planning has bedevilled the delivery of the big infrastructure projects - the big conceptual projects like transport and housing that we need to see delivered. We would like to see those kinds of areas resolved. On how it is resolved, we do not believe there is a magic formula in any one particular role and it needs a system-wide focus, energy, ambition and implementation.