Mr. Michael Sheehan:

When the re-establishment of town councils is being looked at, we always say we are trying to encourage more minorities, women and people from different backgrounds into local government. As somebody who served on a local authority for the bones of 15 years, all I needed was 200 votes and I was a poll-topper. To get on to a local authority now a candidate needs 1,400 votes. The bar is set far too high. Yesterday, a report came out on vacancy in town centre buildings. The town centre teams are going to do the devil and all. There is no difference between those teams and the urban district councils and that is not an accident. There is a correlation between the town centres with the highest proportion of empty buildings and the areas of the former urban district councils. There is, therefore, an economic rationale for the reintroduction of town councils. We lost 49 of them across the country. There were no staff lost. They were redeployed, so in efficiency terms it saved nothing.

There were people who were quite happy to serve on the urban district and town councils and that was their lot. They were happy enough to do that. When the town councils were abolished these people ran for the council but, as I said, where previously someone could be a poll-topper with 200 votes, in the local authority elections 200 votes means a candidate will be a kind of laughing stock. People's political lives and careers were stunted by a simple decision. There is a rationale there to encourage people from a foreign background who want to get involved in local politics but who will never get 1,700 or 1,800 votes. Women who have something to give but who are not going to be able to serve on the local authority will get 200 to 250 votes quite easily. I suggest we look at that. In the context of a county council it is very easy to have a municipal authority in the middle with additional powers or some level below that. It can be done. If the Seanad is serious about reforming local democracy to make it more reflective of the population - if it is 50% women and 50% men, which Wexford is - there is an opportunity to get people into local government who otherwise would never get into it. Those people will look at it and say it is a closed shop or an old network and they will never go into it.