Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

The Minister made the point that the mayoralty is only part of what he hopes to do for local government. It will be welcome. A directly elected mayor is an idea worth trying, especially for Dublin, to see how it will work out and evolve. That said, we should not lose sight of the importance of the role of the ordinary county and city councillor. These people are at the coal face and are often able to achieve things that perhaps Deputies and the Opposition cannot. There is no separation of Government and Opposition on local authorities.

The Minister made a point about reducing the number of councillors. I would guard against that because we do not want politics to become totally professionalised and a full-time job. The good point about councils is that they still have a certain number of people who come from and work in the community. They have other jobs and experiences which they can bring to their work as local county councillors. We need to keep that.

I hope that in whatever the Minister does he will not allow the media to drive the agenda. In reality, there are not too many Deputies. Professor Michael Gallagher of Trinity College has said the number of Irish parliamentarians is in line with that in other countries of similar size to Ireland. There is a tendency for us to go along with the media agenda. The Minister mentioned the election of faceless people from lists who would be picked by party membership. We should not do only what the media says but should do what is good for democratic representation in this country.

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