Ms Kate Feeney:

I thank Deputy Howlin for his question. I am glad he raised the subsidiarity issues because I was certainly not going to mention the war. A joke is often made that we are probably sitting in the biggest county council in the country here in Dáil Éireann. That is something we need to address when talking about the rebalancing of powers. The Deputy is right. If you speak to county councillors in any part of the country, you will find councillors who do not know what the Committee of the Regions is. We have reporting structures but we are sitting in committee rooms such as this. We report to our regional assemblies. It does not trickle down to our council chambers and that is a problem. We have newsletters that go out to councillors who have signed up to them. We are relying on people to sign up for the newsletter and then relying on them to open it once it lands in their inbox. We are trying to find ways around that.

The Deputy Howlin raised the issue of trying to use local and regional authorities to fight xenophobia in cities. It is a message we in the Committee of the Regions champion. Of course, there are local representatives who do not sign up to that message in the same way that there are national representatives who do not, and they can be found in every member state. It is, however, a message we try to champion. This year, the president, Mr. Tzitzikostas, awarded the first Pawe Adamowicz award. Pawe Adamowicz was a mayor who was a strong supporter of LGBTQI rights and was murdered in his home city. The award was given to Ms Henriette Reker, Mayor of Cologne, who was the target of a xenophobic attack that nearly took her life on the eve of her election. She was elected while she was in a coma. She was the first recipient of the award. We use our position and committee to champion those ideals and award those who sign up to them.

On how we can further the dialogue at home, meetings like this are important. We should hold them more often. We should get them out of rooms like this and engage with people who are not always engaged in the conversation. That may be done by choosing subject matter. I know when Councillor Fintan Phelan in Carlow held a local dialogue meeting he chose a local issue to discuss, which meant people who would not normally care about the EU came along and learned about it as a result. We have to find better ways of doing it but today is a good start.