Mr. Noel Dempsey:

Having listened to colleagues' earlier contributions and the previous one, all I can say is that I wish them well in drawing up this report. I am in danger of saying that I agree with everything my colleagues said. Then we would be in real trouble, because they are all saying different things.

On paying councillors on a full-time basis, apart from the erosion of their powers, they do not have the capacity currently to fully utilise the powers that they possess. The reason for this is that the balance of power at local authority level is wrong. It is not the democratically elected members of a local authority who make the real decisions; it is the paid executives. Until paid executives know that the people they are answerable to have the capacity to question their decisions and have the information needed to query what is going on, there will not be a good or democratic system of local government.

It is clear from the report that councillors have a representative role and a statutory role. The representative role is they go around and electors ask questions and raise local issues, like potholes, footpaths or whatever else. Because a councillor needs to get re-elected, 70% or 80% of his or her time is spent doing those things and following up officials on these queries. They have not the time to read the report. I ask anybody here to go online - there is a great service now - and look at the agenda for the monthly meeting of the local authority and at the number of reports that are read. Councillors are expected to know of planning, which is an important role. Then there is climate change and all sorts of national policies that councillors have to be experts in, but they cannot be because they do not have not the time. If we want a meaningful, democratic local government system, we have to pay the people to do what they are supposed to do, which is to represent the people fully.

A halfway house would be the type of independent advice we are talking about. Is it feasible that every group of councillors, rather than the executive, will have the expertise in finance, planning and so on? Probably not. That would probably be an expensive way of doing it. Maybe groups like AILG and LAMA would combine and have an organisation similar to the Institute of Public Administration, which does a good job at national level for civil servants. There would be an institute for local government that would have research capabilities to give independent advice to councillors. That would probably not even be a halfway house.

I agree that we need a proper regional tier just for strategic planning.

The reason so many national bodies have been set up, whether it be the National Roads Authority, NRA, Irish Water or whatever else, is planning was not done jointly by local authorities in different areas, even though it could have been. Having a regional tier for strategic planning of various kinds would have been the better approach to this; there would be democratically elected people with back-up and expertise to be able to challenge this kind of nonsense. Every national plan that we have had has had the population projections wrong. There is a low and a high medium and generally because of diktats from across the road, the lowest number is always chosen. We can see what that has done to current county development plans. The figures are totally out, as is housing and so forth. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to have a democratic regional level.

While I may not be as vehement as Deputy Phelan on the issue of town councils, I agree with him. The municipal district level is about right for the delivery of local services. I respect what Mr. Brendan Fitzgerald said and I believe each municipal district was designed, insofar as possible, to have at least one centre of population and an area around it. It is a good model and councillors are happy with it as far as it goes. It was a reasonable attempt at reform in this area.

As for full-time councillors, it is more likely that there would be a more diverse membership of local authorities if people knew they could survive on the salary. That would be helpful, as well.

Turning to local finance, and I will leave it at that, I have no great problem around national governments wanting the delivery of child care or whatever else and asking the local authorities to do it, provided they can provide the finance, and maybe some local finance as well. However, there should be local discretion; it should be the local body that decides what its targets and aims are within a broader policy framework but they must be financed.