Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am the rapporteur to this committee which has been engaging since last autumn with a wide range of witnesses to discuss the future of local government in Ireland. Today's witnesses range from chief executives of local authorities and public representatives to members of academia and the general secretaries of our headquarters, who have responsibility not just for our political members but indeed engagement by the ordinary people of Ireland in the political system, which is is just as important, if not more so. We have here the mix that makes the Irish political system at local government level work.

I want to emphasise that it does work. That should be the starting point in terms of people maybe having a negative assessment that things do not work. Having been a councillor for 16 years at local government level, at both town and county, and looking back on that period since I was first elected in 1999, I know things do work and indeed they work even better now in terms of the scope and sphere of influence of local government on everybody's lives. Most important is that it is working in the right way and the people it is ultimately working for. It will be extremely interesting today to hear the perspectives of everybody here. We have heard from our local government members and from members in the Northern Ireland system, who were critical of our system here and the amount of centralised power. On the last occasion, we heard from Ministers on local government and from spokespersons for the various parties.

One of the most recent and valuable contributions has been from our own Library and Research Service team, who have done an extensive body of work examining the transfer of powers over the last 30 years from local government to central government. For those of us who are day-to-day political practitioners, it is a really interesting document and worth reading, not just on what has been transferred but why. That is a very interesting question. On some occasions there has been a failure of members themselves to adopt various strategies while on others it is that grasp of central government taking from it. The discussions have been very interesting. It is important to make sure the system serves the people. As somebody who started off working at town council level, which is very local, I know the importance of delivery of local government at a granular level. We live on a geographically small island. We want to achieve large infrastructure projects but they cannot always be achieved at local level and have to go to central government. It is a question of balancing the two. I am looking forward to hearing everyone's contributions today.