Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

None the less, he was out there. Then he came back today and withdrew the Water Services (Amendment) Bill, and rightly so. He should also withdraw the Bill we are discussing, because it is a disgraceful attack on law-abiding citizens with threats of law. What is it all for? Is it to keep a bureaucratic system of local government in place? When I joined the county council in the 1990s, there was a county manager, a county engineer, a county secretary and a few other engineers; now there is a plethora of officials. It was the previous Government that did this, not the current Minister, but the Fine Gael Party did not object to it.

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