John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

They did not. That is right. I said that tongue in cheek.

I will be controversial here. I decided I would when I came in. We are having a discussion about how councillors feel they are emasculated, are losing powers and do not have influence. At the same time, we are saying they should become fully paid positions. Is there not a central contradiction in that? They are losing powers to do everything, but let them have full-time jobs. That is a direct contradiction in terms. If we were to have a proper review, implement reform and move to what Senator Black said about the delivery of functions locally, there might be a case for councillors to be full-time. While the clamour is that councillors do not have enough powers to do what they want to do, there is no case for full-time paid positions. My underlying worry - this is happening to a large extent already - relates to the removal from local authorities of some of the expertise people bring from their own backgrounds, which is leading to the position of councillor becoming homogeneous across the various authorities.

Senator Cassells and I will never agree about town councils. In our time, we introduced changes to how commercial rates operate in order to allow greater flexibility for councillors to have variations within their local authorities. When he was Minister of State, Deputy Ring was pumping millions into main streets, while the rates sections of local authorities were taking millions out of them. The best way to keep our towns and cities looking well is to have businesses operating on main streets. We need to swing the balance of funding away from the narrow traditional business on the main streets to out-of-town centres.

I am not familiar with Senator Ó Cuív's diktat on 50 km. It was not there in my time. Perhaps it has been introduced by some of my colleagues in government.