Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Given how limited the roles are in this office, my fear is that someone will be elected to the office and he or she will not take it as seriously as he or she should. He or she could end up delegating a whole load of the powers back to the director general. We already have a total power imbalance in local democracy between elected representatives and what are currently chief executives. If this goes ahead, someone who gets elected and is not terribly serious about the role can delegate these all back. Then, the electorate will rightly conclude after a while, “Why do we have a directly elected mayor if they will only be delegating these functions back to the director general and not taking responsibility for them themselves?”

We then could have a situation where, in a number of years, there could be kind of a lame duck, directly elected mayor.

Not only is it not replicated in other parts of the country, as the Minister of State said, there could be a situation in which the office is not continued and people will ask what is the point. Those are my concerns regarding the section.