Ms Mary Hoade:

I acknowledge the comments made by Senator Boyhan and many others. As the president of the AILG, I know we are acutely aware of the situation regarding Moorhead. Our up-to-date version on it at this stage is that we are awaiting Cabinet approval. My understanding is that there is a commitment that it will be delivered within the first anniversary of the programme for Government, which is at the end of June. We are awaiting Cabinet approval in relation to it.

I want to make reference to comments made by Senator Fitzpatrick at the outset, and I thank her for them, about local authority members. Throughout this pandemic, for the last 18 months councillors were very much to the forefront in their local communities. They responded to the community call. We were front-line workers, to a certain extent, in our local communities. That is what we are meant to do. We have a democratically elected mandate by the people and that is what we are expected to do. At this point in time, we hope approval will be given by Cabinet.

Our organisation, I am sure councillor Sheahan will speak for himself and LAMA, has been involved in a non-pay working focus group set up by the Department. We have put much work into preparing an action plan, which we are about to finalise at this stage, in relation to non-pay support elements. That is vital for councillors when carrying out their duties going forward. As part of the non-pay supports, we discussed the issues of maternity, paternity and adoption leave. That is very much to the forefront at the moment. We are currently working on finalising proposals which will be put forward in relation to the provision of maternity leave for our members. We hope to submit that to the Minister in the coming weeks. It is important that we recognise and look at the role of local government, the issue of getting more female members involved in local government and the retention of our members because there is a drain on that. We find, in many cases, members who contested an election do one term and do not go forward again. We must look at that as well.

We are working very closely with the Minister and the Department. To answer Senator Boyhan's question, I hope we will see a conclusion to this by the first anniversary of the programme for Government.