Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

The Minister of State tells us they do but has he asked them? Let us have the referendum and we will follow it up because this is not a serious proposal unless the Minister is prepared to take a number of actions. The Minister of State's colleagues in Fianna Fáil demolished local government in the 1970s when they effectively took away the funding base for local authorities. Everyone knows that. If the Minister were serious about doing something for effective government making in Dublin at a local level, as elsewhere in the country, the first thing he must sort out is a proper funding regime. The Minister is jumping fences before he has sorted out the fundamental problem.

The other problem is that if we are serious about a directly elected mayor, and I believe it is something worthwhile, the first thing we would do is radically amalgamate local government in all its facets throughout this country. It seems we are over-governed in terms of the number of local authorities we have throughout the entire country but if the Minister is not prepared to deal with that canard and he is not prepared to deal with the funding issue, dealing with this issue to the exclusion of local government reform in itself will not solve the problem.

What Dubliners want to see across the 12 constituencies and the four authorities is effective decision making, and many of the new authorities established in the past 15 years from waste to water have slowed down decision making. The Minister, Deputy Gormley, is a classic example of a person who is frustrating the will of many local authorities in Dublin to do things they want to do because of the over-centralisation he and others have brought to bear. The issue is a much more serious one and I ask the Minister to deal with it seriously. We have the potential to do something right in the long term but the Minister cannot possibly do that if he has not laid the proper foundation stones in terms of funding and a radical reorganisation of local government.

We are in a very difficult financial position. At some point over the next few weeks the Government will tell us whether we face an adjustment of €4 billion, €5 billion or €6 billion in 2011 and in my area of south Dublin that will lead to a reduction in the budget of between 10% and 15% locally. People in my constituency, and I suspect in other Dublin constituencies, want to know how we can provide services in a context where that adjustment will occur across the city and county. As Deputy Hogan said, they are not particularly interested in the vanity project of the Minister, Deputy Gormley-----

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