Mr. Tom Moylan:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation. I will try to hit a couple of the questions, perhaps not specifically but in general. As regards the centralisation of our local government system, we are all well aware of it. We highlighted in our opening statement, and previously in our submission, the dominance of central government over local government, and at local level the dominance of the executive over the elected members. We are well aware of it. To me, it comes down to trust. Central government just does not trust local government. It is as simple as that, and I think we can all agree on that. Whether that is central government at a political or Government level or at a departmental level, they just do not trust local government.

In fairness to the local government sector and the local authorities, in the past ten years, they have come a long way to reverse that. They got the local economic development remit in 2014, coming out of the financial crash, and the work of the local enterprise offices, LEOs, has shown they can deliver on local economic development. They have shown they can deliver at a local community level, with the realignment of local community development with local authorities and the local government sector in 2014. We saw it during Covid with the community response forums, and we can take that through to the Ukrainian refugee crisis and the wider refugee crisis. When local authorities are asked to step up to the mark in the local government sector, they can do it.

It comes down to trust, and at a central government level, they need to trust local authorities and the elected members. It is up to associations such as AILG and LAMA to provide training to our members and upskill them. Our members have a challenge whereby they need to balance their statutory and oversight roles with their representative roles. Powers will not be devolved to local government level or, indeed, to our elected councils and their elected members until we can show, at central government level, that our members will carry out their statutory and oversight functions within the council chamber, and that is very important.

On the issue of municipal districts versus town councils, it is our mandate in AILG to work within the system out of municipal districts. They are the sub-county structure of local government that currently exists. From all our research and, in particular, from our Maynooth report, we know that our members value the structure of municipal districts. They work, and our members feel that day-to-day operational issues can be discussed at municipal districts. They could be improved. They need more financial autonomy and the municipal district budgetary plans need to be better aligned to the schedule of municipal district works. Both those issues need to be synergised and go hand in hand in order that the public on the ground can see, through the schedule of municipal district works, what works are being carried out at local and municipal district levels.

The municipal districts do work and can work and our research and that of others has shown that.

On powers and functions, Senator O'Reilly and others have said, and I agree, that there is no point in looking for more powers and functions without finance and without revenue-raising powers for local authority level for the elected members and for the local authorities themselves. A proper funding model for local authorities with substantial revenue-raising powers has to go hand in hand with that.

On the participation of women, in the recent local elections held in June, 812 or 86% of outgoing councillors put themselves forward for election again. As 205 of those were sitting female councillors, 83% of our sitting female councillors put themselves at the local elections. If we are to move the dial in getting our council chambers more gender neutral we must retain the female councillors we have, which we have started. A lot of work has gone into that by a number of organisations - Women for Election are here and our own Elaine Lynch has done a huge amount of work on that - and that is a start. A total of 247 women councillors were elected, which is an increase of 22, or 10%, from the number of women councillors elected in 2019. The opportunity may be in the next general and Seanad elections, where current councillors may be elected to higher office and there will be co-options and vacancies. If the political parties make a conscious effort to promote female councillors in those co-options, we can get to 26% higher than it is now.