Mr. Peter Flynn:

The question has come up in this session and in the previous two sessions as to whether town councils should be restored. While it is tempting to say that they should be, it would be a mistake to restore them in the form they had in the past. What I would like to see happening, if at all, is that the local areas would be used as the boundaries for the future. I have been very lucky. I have had ten years on the town council and ten years on the county council. The county council system is a dinosaur of a system that simply does not work. The town council system does work. What would work would be if we turned to the local electoral areas and bestowed the powers of the town council to the local area council which would then give them some real meaning. They could raise their own money and make their own determinations on every decision that comes before them. They would be knocking on the door at the following election.

As part of that, we need more councillors. I know this will go against some other discussions. It does not make sense to have full-time counsellors. We need part-time counsellors to ensure we get a strong mix of diverse people involved in politics. We would not get that with full-time politicians. We need to reduce the workload. Using the town council as an example, there were nine of us for 5,000 people but now there is one for 5,000 people and the population is growing. It is key that we have more. I will give the example in the west Mayo electoral area with an electorate of 20,000. We have four councillors all of whom are in the Westport town area. Newport is a town of approximately 800 people and Louisburgh is of similar size. They can never have an elected representative again, which does not make sense. That is not what democracy is about if we are talking about bringing it down to the lowest level. That is where we really need to be thinking how we reform local government. I would love if that was part of the discussion here.

I particularly commend the four former councillors on coming here to give their piece. It just shows the passion and the way people feel about local government. It is not simply a job where they get to pick up the cheque. Mr. Deane brings the perspective that we all need to understand. The whole principle of subsidiarity has been lost in Ireland. There was a big hoo-ha a few months ago when we increased the number of TDs by ten. However, we are going into a local election shortly and there will not be one single additional council seat in the country even though the population has boomed over that timeframe.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for facilitating this session. We have had a great debate and I look forward to the results.