Mr. Michael Murphy:

I am aware that time is of the essence here, so I will make just a few brief points, including if anything can be done to restore the Borough of Clonmel and the other boroughs as well. The Borough of Clonmel was granted by royal charter in 1608. It is something we held on to, despite our famed resistance to Oliver Cromwell in 1650. If there is anything the committee can do to restore that and give independence back to Clonmel, I would be very grateful.

In my introductory speech I gave the example of Cork city, represented here by Councillor Kieran McCarthy, and Cork county, Donegal and Limerick, all of which have full-time EU affairs officers. My local authority in Tipperary had such an officer but for whatever reason of staffing challenges and so on it just petered out. The local authorities with full-time EU affairs officers are accessing EU funds. Cork city is one of 100 cities, along with Dublin, that will be a climate-neutral city under the Horizon Europe funds. These are pots of money. Notwithstanding the networking opportunities, it is complex to access them. This is why we need these EU affairs officers. Ms Teresa Lennon and Mr. Tadgh Browne are here representing the Irish Regions European Office. It is a resource for the Irish authorities to engage with, but it is very important that we would have EU affairs officers who can connect with the Irish Regions European Office, which can guide the officers and help them through the complex processes involved.

I work in the private sector and I am a full-time public representative. I work also with the European Committee of the Regions. I see that local authorities can get a lot of things wrong, but they can also get a lot of things right. I was very proud of the way my local authority responded to the Covid-19 pandemic, with precision and in a timely manner. All the other local authorities were the same. They were at the epicentre of the Covid-19 recovery and response. I will give the recovery and resilience instrument as an example.

It was a big pot of money that came from Europe. Regrettably, local authorities in Ireland were not consulted to a great extent on the preparation of the recovery and resilience facility. It was really just a box-ticking exercise. They certainly were not involved in its implementation. Local authorities cannot simply be executors. If the Minister was here, I would deliver a simple message to him. Let us empower local authorities. Let us have cross-party and cross-departmental support to empower local authorities because they can deliver.