Dr. Br?d Quinn:

Some of the lessons to be learned from the Limerick experience include the effectiveness, as Deputy Ó Broin mentioned, of the pre-plebiscite campaigning, if one can call it that. Afterwards, as I mentioned, the implementation group was established and a range of people with different qualifications served on that group. Hand in hand with that, there were democratic efforts. For example, some of my colleagues in UL conducted Let's Talk About Our Mayor! to ascertain what the public would want from a directly elected mayor. Awareness and consciousness-raising went on to get people's positive and negative views, acknowledge them and make them public. There were 69 recommendations in the report from Limerick. Not all of the 69 came through in the legislation. Even some of those which were in the earliest form of the legislation have been watered down slightly as it has gone along. Because that has happened in Limerick, some of those lessons do not need to be-----