Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)

-----which they would be reluctant to do.

The six-month by-election rule is definitely a good idea. What happened under the last Government was a complete sham, but it also occurred before that. It is definitely a good idea to introduce that provision.

I was shocked to hear Deputy Pearse Doherty say last night that the Supreme Court appeal to the High Court decision to force the Donegal south-west by-election is still being fought. It seems outrageous that we should be spending money on that at the moment.

It is a good idea to reduce allowances for presidential election campaigns from €1.3 million to €750,000. It is sensible but the new figure is still way too high. The €200,000 return figure is also high. We are nonetheless nothing like the American situation where it costs about $1 billion for a presidential candidate to run for office. The USA has a population which is approximately 70 times ours but it is still a mad scenario over there. One must be a multi-millionaire to consider running for the White House. We are not quite as bad as that yet, but it would be a positive move to bring the figures down further, thus making the presidential election more available to ordinary citizens with less money. We would also have to change the way a candidate can get on the ballot paper, which is pretty discriminatory at the moment.

With regard to the Bill's proposal to reduce the number of TDs, it would make a lot more sense to start with local government. If this country is to be run in a healthy fashion we must reform how local government operates. It is one of the biggest differences when one compares Ireland to how other western European countries run local government. The lack of local government here is the starkest difference.

I am sure many Members of the House have read Fintan O'Toole's book Enough is Enough, from which I would like to quote a short extract. It is a fabulous work and deserves attention. In the book, O'Toole argues that the process of radical political reform has to start at local government level. He justifies this on three grounds: 1. the elites are too deeply entrenched to have any interest in radical reform; 2. without real local government what will continue to happen is what has always happened – we get local politicians operating at national level, and national politicians continuing to function as if they were county councillors; and 3. because localism remains so strong, Irish people have a very weak sense of ownership of the State, but a very strong sense of local belonging.

O'Toole also draws attention to the fact that Ireland has some of the best civil society organisations in the world, "all of them built on a very strong sense of local engagement and participation". Commenting that centralisation has been "disastrous", he writes

Instead of being centres for strategic thinking, innovation, co-ordination and long-term planning, Government Departments got bogged down in day-to-day bureaucracy and crisis management.

At present, local government here has only one fifth of the average funding available in Europe. I would like to see greater taxation powers for local government as well as it being involved in education, health and economic development.

Local government input into economic development would provide a huge boost for the country. Also, rather than having civil servants make all the decisions, councillors, as opposed to only taking part in special groups, should also have the power to do so. More often than not, a county manager is a political appointee. I would prefer if such a person was directly elected by the people in order that if he or she did not perform well, they would have the power to remove him or her. Currently, they have little power over those who make decisions for them at local level.

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