Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy may have a point. Members of the Oireachtas still have links with councillors and we try to communicate with them when travelling around the country.

Some phenomena never cease to amaze me. I met a delegation from a particular local authority not so long ago which was looking for more money for the authority's programme. I outlined the facts to the delegation and was rather surprised some weeks ago to find out that what the local authority officials regarded as a really big scheme was shot down at council level over some technical difficulties associated with Part 8 or Part 10 of the legislation. In reality, they did not want the scheme and they were put under pressure by those with a snobbish point of view.

As public representatives, we sometimes shout and roar and councillors are no better or worse than us in this regard. They want social housing and talk about the figures. They want the Government to provide money but when it comes to making a decision at council level, their bravery sometimes diminishes. Our job is to provide the resources and we are doing so. In the past, different Ministers might have slowed down submissions in the hope they would not run out of money. It is the other way around at present in that we are chasing the councils to make applications for projects.

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