Mr. Dermot Lacey:

I thank Senators for their questions. I am a full-time councillor on part-time pay, but I am happy to be a councillor because I enjoy it. I will be asking the people of Pembroke in six or seven weeks' time to re-elect me. I dislike the system but I do not dislike being a councillor.

Senator Black asked about the 2014 Bill. I am one of the very few nerds who read all 417 pages, and I remember there were that many pages, of the Putting People First document. In those 417 pages, there was one additional power, which, word for word, was the power to locate and relocate bus stops. Believe it or not, when that Bill became an Act, the Minister had taken that out. The 2014 Act was an attack on democracy. It is a disastrous Act and in my view, it should be totally taken out. There was no additional benefit to councillors.

On social media abuse, I can take it. I give it and I can take it but I know some other people find it a bit harder.

On the pay issue, we should go back to the Moorhead report. I had big question marks in respect of much of the content of the Moorhead report because it was factually wrong all over the place. When the report opened by thanking the officials in the Department of housing and local government for their assistance, the credibility of the report went out the window because I have never seen them help local government.

I will make the same point as Senator Craughwell made previously. We have outsourced the governance of Ireland to quangos. Unless we, as public representatives, collectively change that, we are losing our democratic structures. I ask committee members to ask themselves the following questions. They do not have to answer in public but they should ask themselves who are the chairmen of the HSE, the National Transport Authority, NTA, Transport Infrastructure Ireland or any of the other quangos to which we have given away power. Unless the committee members tackle that issue, we will no longer live in a democracy, which is one of my biggest fears.