Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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It is still a mystery. During my 30 years in local government, local government and regional government, as stated in the presentation, have been highly centralised. I am thinking of a country, such as Belgium, which did not have a government for more than 12 months but its regions were strong. In Spain, the regions are also strong, and presumably their representatives are better resourced as delegates to the Committee of the Regions than are the witnesses. How do the witnesses compete with powerful regional representation from such countries?