Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

I congratulate Deputy Finneran on his appointment and welcome his kind words in respect of working co-operatively with Members of the House.

This issue arose as a result of an anomaly identified in legislation last December by my party leader, Deputy Eamon Gilmore. As I understand it, the purpose of the Bill is to prevent a constitutional challenge being brought before the House in respect of the current standing of the organisations, agencies and groups covered by the Bill.

When the Minister of State's predecessor last spoke on the issue in this Chamber and in the Seanad he said that the Bill is a short document which provides that the Minister should have the authority to establish bodies to provide services to local authorities where there is a specific purpose and where it would be more practical and economical to provide the service by a single body rather than each of the 34 major authorities. There is a strong degree of logic to this.

However, a concern not addressed by the previous Minister of State relates to the tabling of parliamentary questions by Members. Increasingly and, in particular, in respect of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Members receive responses to the effect that the matter raised is one for the Environmental Protection Authority or National Roads Authority. I wonder if we are creating the same difficulty by way of this legislation and whether we will hit a roadblock when we table questions in respect of the housing agencies, Dublin Transport Authority and Dockland groups.

Will these agencies by accountable to the Minister not alone by means of annual report but directly? Will they be accountable to this House? Also, will they be accountable to Members of the House through parliamentary questions? These are valid questions. They are issues on which the Minister of State should be clear.

Will these groups and agencies be monitored in terms of costs and operations? For example, the Local Government Management Services Board established in 1999 employed 19 staff at an annual cost to the Exchequer of €1.9 million. When this was last checked, the board had 30 staff at an annual cost of more than €10 million. In 1999, the Local Computer Services Board employed 93 staff at an annual cost to the Exchequer of €5.8 million. When last examined in 2007, it employed 96 staff at an annual cost of €15 million. In many other agencies, staff levels and costs are increasing. However, this may not necessarily be a bad thing. What must be examined is what are the performance indicators of these rising costs. Is the public getting a return on this? I make this comment in the context of the Green Paper on local government being published and these agencies needing to incorporate themselves and blend in with the new structure for local government which will be put in place.

It is also an acknowledged fact that the legislation before us is crisis driven as a result of the anomaly I pointed out earlier. It is hybrid legislation and needs to be examined. I will return to the simple point I made earlier about accountability through a parliamentary question. On a previous occasion when the Bill was discussed, Deputy Hogan spoke about primary and secondary legislation. I do not know whether this matter has been cleared up since then.

The Labour Party will not oppose this Bill. All of these agencies are established to serve the public and provide a better means of local government. How does the Minister of State see these organisations working alongside and concurrently with the proposed reform of local government? How does he see these organisations and agencies being accountable to the House by means of parliamentary question?

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