Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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I know it is stated the Minister will attempt to ensure much more happens at municipal level. However, I have read through some of the sections of the Bill and have thought about how this will happen in practice. We will come to this later and I will draw attention to it then in terms of what I mean by this. I am trying to visualise how it will work in practice. For example, the local authority can remove some of the functions from the municipal authority. If one was really going to position the municipal authority as the key, in terms of where decisions will be made, that would not be possible without municipal level having to agree to it. I can see how the officials at local authority level will, more or less, be driving that. Having sat on a local authority for years, I know how this will play out, as do most who have had that kind of involvement.

I would have liked if the Minister had accepted that there is a need to do this in a more formal way, where we look at the charter and give it a little bit of autonomy. For example, rather than things being handed down, there should be an independent assessment to try to point to areas which could be drawn down.

We all accept that Ministers are very busy people and will not go through lists of things that will be devolved to local government. If we are to have a proper devolution process we have to show how that will happen rather than rely on the goodwill of a particular Minister who is committed to doing that. This could continue for a considerable time into the future. That was the intention behind including this, to make it more dynamic and more formal, without depending on goodwill.