Mr. John Keogh:

I think the biggest challenge for the future of local democracy is attracting young people into it. We are seeing some progress in that respect but there are a lot of challenges. There is the discourse in how people are being treated. Senator Cassells spoke about people being able to connect with a public representative and know who they are. It is about walking down the street and being able to deal with those issues. Mr. Deane spoke of how so much of the work of Oireachtas Members is taken up with local issues. I find as a public representative that people come to me on issues I cannot deal with because they require me to contact my Oireachtas colleagues to try to get these issues addressed. That is not where Members' time should be spent. The local representatives should be fulfilling their role but they do not have the power to make those decisions on those issues. We really need to get back to empowering the locally elected representative. I hope reforms will take place that will bring back power to the local representatives. In planning, I accept that there is a national planning framework, which is a great plan and sets out the planning policy for the entire country, but, equally, at local level, certain planning decisions are refused that do not make logical sense. Issues of local need arise in rural development at a time we are talking about rural decline. We are trying to encourage people to remain in areas. Sometimes that means family members must need to live close to each other. That could be 10 km away; that is still local to people. However, planning decisions are being refused because the person is more than 4.5 km away.

That is local to me; 10 km is local to me. We need to see practical application of the policies that are in place and not what I consider an arbitrary approach to making decisions.

I am concerned that female representation is declining. We are losing people in County Roscommon. While new candidates are coming forward, it remains to be seen if they will get elected. I am concerned that we will see less female representation with fewer female candidates getting elected in the 2024 local elections. That is a real concern. We should all be concerned about that. The quota was mentioned. I agree with Nancy Pelosi who said that people should not vote for her because she is a woman but, equally, they should not vote against her because she is a woman. It should be on merit. The system brings its own challenge if we go down that road.