Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all of the councillors here this afternoon and thank them for their initial contributions. The themes are the same this afternoon as this morning but may be presented slightly differently and from a different perspective. The one theme I noticed was the restoration of powers and how to restore powers to local democracy. Simply, without power, there is no democracy. Over the years powers were eroded. I refer to my time as a councillor, from 2004 until I left. Power was limited at the time of the last county development plan, which was the last democratic role played by councillors. With the advent of the national planning framework and the Office of the Planning Regulator, a significant number of powers have been taken from councillors.

It is vital that we have balanced representation in terms of having more female representation. Fair play to Carlow County Council, which has 50:50 representation. Wicklow County Council has a significantly long way to go. Wicklow County Council ended 2019 with probably the highest female participation but, sadly, three female councillors have vacated their seats and been replaced with male councillors. The issue falls into the whole situation of security and social media. That definitely has a significant influence on what is happening at the moment.

This morning we spoke about providing councillors with support, whether financial, legal or planning, which Senator Boyhan mentioned. The former Minister, Noel Dempsey, mentioned that a shared service approach might be the way to do this. He suggested that we provide a body of people that each council can reach out to when they need independent advice. In fairness, the top table puts a lot of pressure on councillors when they want to and perhaps are a little liberal with the truth of what councillors can and cannot do. Overall I served for 12 years as a councillor and some of my happiest times were spent in local democracy because a councillor is at the heart of democracy, is the first person with the issue, meets people to discuss day-to-day issues and resolves a lot of the day-to-day issues everybody has. Councils have huge role to play in the future. What that role is, nobody is 100% sure and that is the reason for our discussions on where we see local democracy moving forward.

Councillor Darcy said his council provides 1,100 services to his community. Whenever there is an emergency in this country, the first place that national government looks towards for solutions is local government.

We are all interested in seeing how the office of mayor will work in Limerick. It will determine how mayoralties will be rolled out elsewhere. It will be critical to how local democracy is rolled out in the future. I thank all the witnesses for attending.