Noel Dempsey (Meath West, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy is not showing much faith in the democratic process by which the directly elected mayor will be elected rather than appointed by anybody. He or she will have very strong powers and will be able to head up regional authorities. We must wait and see what happens.

On the taxi regulator, the taxi regulator will be subsumed into the National Transport Authority. Obviously, discussions have to take place from the point of view of industrial relations and so on but it will be subsumed some time over the course of the next year.

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