John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

In accordance with the programme for Government, I recently published the Green Paper on local government reform, Stronger Local Democracy — Options for Change. The Green Paper outlines a range of issues for consideration, including the establishment of expenditure limits at local elections.

The submissions made in the course of the preparation of the Green Paper were generally supportive of some expenditure limit. The Green Paper outlines two main options with regard to such limits for local elections, to introduce a fixed expenditure ceiling or to link limits to a proportion of Dáil expenditure. It states that care needs to be taken to ensure against overly bureaucratic rules and suggests that it may be useful to engage on the issue on a cross-party basis. In this regard, I have written to the Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government with a view to engaging with the committee and to explore the scope for an all-party approach to this issue.

See this speech in context