Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

I have been listening for the past two days to both the Private Members' motion debate and this debate this morning. What strikes me most is a genuine desire on all sides of the House for change, both the recognition that the system fundamentally does not work and a real desire to see it change. As I stated yesterday, I welcome many of the Government's proposals and agree wholeheartedly with Deputy Stagg on the extraordinary situation in local government whereby the elected officials seem to be blocked out of a great deal of substantive decision making.

I wish to make some observations. In my previous role before coming to this House I was involved a great deal in transformational change, and particularly in cultural change. Much of the debate in the past two days has been to do with changing the rules. There has been a great deal of agreement on the outcomes and the changes we want to see brought about.

From my own experience in cultural change and looking at evidence around the world, as I said previously, most major change programmes fail. One of the reasons they fail is because people agree on the outcomes and some of the working practices or behaviours that need to change, but often that is where change programmes tend to stop. They do not get down to the next level which drives the practices and the behaviours, namely, the mindsets.

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