Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think we can all agree that there should be a third tier because counties are too big. This is equally valid for Dublin. I remember having this argument. We have Dublin City Council now but going back in time there was Pembroke district, where I grew up, Rathmines and so on. These were town councils within the city. I know Dublin really well and it is a city of villages that do not really connect in lots of ways. A third tier is therefore necessary. It would be complex to do that. The old arrangement was not simple either because there were town commissioners who had very little power and then there were some town councils with planning and housing powers. These town councils that we are all talking about nostalgically were a very mixed bag. Some quite big towns did not have town councils while some very small towns did. That system is redundant. I still think that the sophistication of life and the very wide provision of services mean that all areas need a third tier.

How it is to be done is something on which we need to have further debate. However, the first thing we need to agree on is that a third tier is needed and is a need for all. By way of example, Connemara had no town council. Galway had Loughrea, Ballinasloe and Tuam while Connemara had none. The problem for Connemara in the big council was always that there was two thirds of the population east of the Corrib in County Galway and in Connemara we had the other third. We were always outvoted and could not even make local decisions for ourselves.