Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Plans are afoot to set up a commission to examine local authority boundaries in the context of the subsequent work done at national level by the constituency commission. While it takes away somewhat from being able to come forward with a Green Paper on local authority reform within the period set out in the programme for Government, it is expected the Minister will be able to introduce some proposals in that regard in the first half of next year.

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