John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

A research report on local election spending limits was published by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, in which the Deputy's party was represented and its members made their points of view known. This is what is causing me surprise. They were in broad agreement with what I was doing and they said that consistently. The Deputy will see this if he goes back over the minutes of the meetings. It was noted by the committee members that the most common approach adopted internationally was the use of a formula based on the size of the electorate. That is why we went along with that. Deputy Ciarán Lynch, who is on that committee, will agree with me that it was a cross-party approach. Everybody involved, including the members of Fine Gael, the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party — I do not know whether Sinn Féin is represented on that committee — said this was the best approach and there was consensus on the issue.

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