Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their contributions. Having served as a councillor for 12 years, I know exactly where they are coming from. From my time since 2004, we have seen a significant erosion of powers. Councillors Gearóid Murphy, Seán O'Donovan and Michael Sheehan brought up the point about privilege and commercial rates. They are two very simple, easy wins we could take out of this. Privilege will become very important because in the democracy we live in today, councillors are very exposed. We have privilege in the Seanad but councillors do not have it in the council chamber. We ask councillors to make some quite serious decisions on occasion. That is one ask from today that we might be able to do something now rather than later.

I will spend a bit of time on the NPF and the OPR. I served on the housing committee in my last term here. Mr. Niall Cussen and I had a good few tête-à-têtes across the table when at that stage he was working for the Department. He was not yet in the Office of the Planning Regulator. We had huge arguments over the population; how they got at the figure they got and then how they were assigning it. In one of my interactions with him at one stage, I said to him, "Please don't tell me you're going to the Office of the Planning Regulator", and three months later he was appointed to the office. The problem was that we had somebody implementing his own plan that he brought through the Houses of the Oireachtas. I had a fundamental problem with that because it completely eroded the powers of the county councillors. One thing I loved was the county development plan. I really did. I used to love it, but we can do nothing now. What happened in Wicklow was quite frightening. If some of our councillors tried to do something, they were told that they could not do it, when in fact they could. They had every right to make amendments if they wanted to. However, they were bullied by the top table and threatened by being told that they were acting illegally. They were not, because eventually on the amendment stage, an amendment was shoved through and the Office of the Planning Regulator actually agreed with it. This is the same office that would not allow it in the first instance. That goes back to the issue of trying to provide legal and financial support for councillors. That is another quick win that perhaps we can work on separately while we are trying to do the overall thing.

I have had major issues with town teams. I did not agree with them from day one. The scheme should be scrapped immediately. It is just a disaster. We are giving private citizens access to funding for their pet projects in their towns and we as councillors get no recognition for them. Then we see that people are able to pick up the phone from a town team and get a director of services within a few seconds, and we as public representatives cannot even get a meeting with them. They were one of the worst things that was brought in. They were a kickback because they were getting rid of the town councils to create this new thing called town teams, the be all and end all. They are eroding democracy; that is exactly what they are doing.

I apologise to the Cathaoirleach; I ran over there. I thank everyone for coming in.