Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I wish to correct Deputy Barry Cowen. Historically urban citizens have been grossly under-represented. I accept we all speak about distances. I accept that town councils have served the country well. However, the democratic imbalance between urban and rural has been enormous since the foundation of the State and this provision in some way rebalances the position but does not go the full way. I think there are reasons for that. I am aware rural Deputies work extremely hard, but urban councillors work almost full-time because of the volume of work per head of population. I accept there is a move to address that issue in the Bill but I would have liked it to go further. I accept there are other issues such as distances, as mentioned by the Chairman. Sometimes it takes as long in an urban area to travel a quarter of the distance the Chairman would take to travel across west Cork. When traffic does not move, it takes quite a long time, about two hours, to travel across one area.