Ms Joanna Tuffy:

I know but I am sure they could come in and have a listen. I presume that was not prohibited, considering they all come looking for our votes at election time. I very much appreciate the Senators who are here and who are involved in this.

There is a lot of negative commentary about what it is like to be a politician. This in itself could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and put people off politics. I have been a TD, a Senator and a councillor. I have been honoured to be each of these things and have really enjoyed the roles. I loved being in the Seanad with the contribution that Senators can make to legislation. It is much less confrontational than the Dáil. It is the same in the council.

In all my years in politics, and I have been elected since 1999 with a small break, I have found being a councillor the most satisfying in terms of achievements and what I have put my mark on that has made life better for people in my community. We do not hear this but if we think about county development plans councillors have a say in the planning of their area. I have been at county development plan meetings where I have succeeded in persuading my fellow councillors to go along with my point of view. There has been a change in the room and in what the council subsequently did in terms of rezoning and other such issues. I could mention many other positive things. When I was deputy mayor I was honoured and I loved the role, with all of the people and diversity in our community that I experienced.

Last year on International Women's Day we had a cross-party panel of women councillors on South Dublin County Council. They spoke about the challenges and bad things that have happened to them but overwhelmingly every one of them said they loved being a councillor and they loved the role. Most women councillors on South Dublin County Council are running for election again. Very often we say things but we do not check the numbers or the facts. The number of women on South Dublin County Council has increased since 2019 via co-options. There is now one extra councillor and 40% of the councillors on South Dublin County Council are women. According to a document I read from the National Women's Council, this is a national trend. The percentage of women councillors in 2019 has increased through co-option since the last election. Ms Dowling mentioned that Labour Party councillor Alison Gilliland was not running.

Ms Gilliland has a fantastic record as a councillor and was previously Lord Mayor of Dublin city. She has been a councillor for ten years. That is a success story. Being an elected councillor is not necessarily, and was never supposed to be, about staying there forever. It has always been the case, going back 100 years, that some people might just serve one term, while other people might serve two and others might stay there forever. It just varies. It is not supposed to be this professional career. We need to remember that.

Public representatives in Scandinavian countries were the first to bring their babies into the parliamentary chamber. That is progress. It is not a bad thing, even if there should be childcare. Childcare workers, people in retail and catering, the staff here and council staff turn up in person. We have people complaining about coming to one statutory council meeting a month. Many other meetings are not statutory and can be done remotely but it is not too much to expect that people turn up for one council meeting, considering most other workers, many of whom are on the minimum wage, have to turn up in person, including carers and those who have children. I am on that side of the debate on remote meetings. I am not saying that none of them should be remote but council meetings should be in person.

The main issue in local government, and the AILG and Senator Malcolm Byrne have done very good work on this, is that we now have the lowest number of elected people per head of population at all levels. Other countries have more layers of democracy, with more elections and more councillors per head of population. That means they are closer to the people and less stretched. That is the biggest issue of all. Many councillors are running again in the next election. Many immigrants are running as Independents because they cannot get a foothold as so many incumbents are running. We did not increase the number of councillors since the most recent election, despite the huge increase in population and in the number of public servants and unelected political staffers. We want to keep the number of councillors down because we have a very antidemocratic discourse. As elected representatives, we need to push back against that.