Ms Anne Colgan:

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach as ucht an tseans seo chun cúis na gcomhairleoirí a chur roimh an gcoiste.

Cities are where the vast majority of people will spend their lives into the future. The quality of life of city dwellers is hugely important and a core part of our responsibility. Inclusive neighbourhoods need to be designed for that population - for children, for young people, for older people and for people who live and work in cities. The responsibility for inclusive design, inclusive neighbourhoods and communities falls to our local authorities. Our urban local authorities do a really good job. However, do they do a good job based on sound principles of local democracy? Is the ethos one of meaningful local democracy? Is power and influence decentralised from Government to local institutions to allow those local authorities to do that job in a meaningful way? The answer is a resounding "No". Many colleagues have expounded on this here today and on other days and I will not go into it again. It is well documented in the Council of Europe monitoring report and in the AILG's research in Maynooth University. I fully support those assessments. I would just like to mention two or three practical points where I feel this issue comes into play in particular. There are threats to local democracy from without and within. The ones from within are the ones we really should take seriously and address. I include everyone in this room and outside it who has a responsibility for governance and government.

The first thing I would like to make reference to is the policymaking function of the councillor. The councillors’ reserved functions are the means by which we exercise our democratic governance. The ease with which these can be removed by Ministers with no solid case based on evidence is a fundamental threat to local democracy. Councillors' policy remit relating to local policy should be the subject of an in-depth review to clarify, strengthen and protect the policymaking function and restrain the power of Ministers to restrict or remove reserved functions, for example, in the area of housing. I hope the committee will make that the subject of a recommendation.

Second, there is a question of how policy is made in the first instance and what the local influence on policymaking is. Who influences national policy? I would certainly have to say that it is not us. Our experience and our local communities are ignored as a rich source of input into policymaking. We have no structured mechanism to bring our experience to bear on national policy. The top-down model prevails. Through our representative body, the AILG, we get invited to working groups and so on, which is very welcome. However, this is unstructured and at the discretion of the centre. Routinely recommendations, especially on legislative matters, are ignored while other very well-resourced interest groups seem to have an unequal influence on policy.

The third point relates to ministerial powers and this is the one that concerns me most. One of the most concerning developments is that the section 28 ministerial powers have now been given such mandatory force. They undermine local planners. They undermine the governance role of local representatives and, by extension, the citizen's rights. When we talk about design of our urban spaces, of course we and our citizens know what we need, but our powers through our local county development plans are being eroded.

The committee is working on its recommendations, which we all greatly look forward to. Even before those recommendations have ink, the committee will be voting on a planning Bill that will leach and strip away the power of local democracy and local government. There is a challenge for the committee members and their colleagues long before their recommendations are written. That is a question for the committee. I support the recommendations on funding.

It is not just with area chairs. There is legal discrimination against urban councillors because we have no municipal districts with the legal backing of municipal districts. Our area committees have no legal force.

The balance of power between the councillors and executive is a very sticky issue which needs to be looked at. I personally do not support the concept of a directly elected mayor and will actively canvass against it. I believe we will be swapping one kind of executive for another and we will have an elected executive taking us in a scary way down the road of the Americanisation of Irish politics.

We, as councillors, must take responsibility for the way we behave and how we exercise our governance function in the chamber. I believe the model of a governing group and an opposition group in the chamber is a lazy copying of the Dáil model.

It does not do us any justice. It pits us against each other instead of working together toward the Executive and holding it to account. We should really think again about how we sort ourselves out and work in the chamber.