Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the committee, I thank the delegates first for their work before coming here to make their presentations. I also thank them for the taking the time to come. All of their contributions were worthwhile. Councillor McCarthy spoke about the bottom-up approach and letting people in Europe know about the implementation of various programmes. There are between 400 and 600 programmes that deliver funding throughout Europe. To give a further example, we had the president of the European Court of Auditors here yesterday. On behalf of the people I represent, during the course of that engagement I outlined the effect decisions made in the European Union had on how we operated in Ireland. They affect farming, tourism and small businesses. They also affect how we get on, adapt, comply with regulations, apply for secure funding and deal with red tape and bureaucracy. I explained it in great detail, as did others who were in attendance at the meeting. Our guest told me afterwards that he really appreciated hearing it in that way, from a person living in a small community like each one of us, councillors, Senators and Deputies. I welcome Deputy MacSharry.

I passionately believe councillors' work is not thought of highly enough. I also passionately believe one of the worst attacks on democracy since the foundation of the State was the abolition of town councils. All of my colleagues know that I am not being political in saying that and I am not criticising the then Government. I do not care who was in power or who made the decision; I would have been critical of it regardless. I would have been critical of it if I had been part of the organisation that made it quite simply because I believe the work town councillors, city councillors and county councillors do is invaluable. Where I come from, town councils that were abolished such as Killarney Town Council were doing invaluable work that has not been replaced. The funny thing about the make-up of a council is that there are different people with their own life experiences and expertise. A typical example was Killarney Town Council, in which we had councillors who were specialists in one field or another. They used to come together at and bring that knowledge to their monthly meetings. It was like a group of experts coming together. They had a connection with the county council and their Oireachtas Members. They formed different tiers of support for communities. I saw the abolition of town councils as an awful attack.

I wish to express my appreciation. I know that my colleagues 100% appreciate the work councillors do, as do the delegates, particularly in their current role. I thank them for being here. We would love to engage with them for longer and I hope they do not think I am cutting the meeting short, but we now have to go into private session. We could discuss this issue until 10 p.m., not that doing so would be bad. However, we cannot do so because we have other obligations. I again thank the delegates.