Ms Gillian Coughlan:

I thank Deputy Lahart. He is singing my song. Subsidiarity is the word of the Committee of the Regions, where actions are taken as closely to the citizen as possible. That is what the European project was designed to do. You think globally and act locally and the money, the actions and also the cultural experiences of being part of a diverse union of countries bind people together. I have many times wondered how often the European Union is mentioned in our local authorities. It very rarely is. When it is mentioned, it is disparagingly.

There is a question of political legitimacy here. If decisions and opinions are being taken that are not being discussed at the local level or there is not a political legitimacy trail, or even a paper trail, then that is a problem. In my analysis, that is due to the weakness of our regional structures. We do not have regional government in Ireland. The Committee of the Regions does what it says on the tin; it thinks about Europe in terms of regions. We in Ireland need to do that. There is a great opportunity for us to reconfigure local government to an extent through the regional assemblies. That brings the legitimacy.

I have asked that a report from the regional assembly would be on the standing orders of reports to the county council. That is still not the case. There is no one person from the regional assembly on Cork County Council who is obliged to answer any questions in regard to it. There is a legitimacy gap. The regional authorities themselves need to be strengthened and given real teeth, not just on spatial strategy where they become the whipping boy for planning and planners. That is not good enough. There needs to be decentralisation to take the power out of this building and give citizens their chance at local and regional level and to empower the European Union to help us and empower us to help them. In that event, our structures will be more congruous with the structures in Europe. I think Irish people would appreciate that. We do not seem to fit in; the Lego pieces just are not sticking together. There is a body of work that could be done there legislatively to strengthen our regional assemblies and, certainly on a legitimacy basis, to create accountability from the local authorities up and from the regional assemblies back down again. That umbrella needs to be examined. We have a little bit of homework perhaps.