Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I will share time with Deputy Tom Fleming.

I commend Deputy Niall Collins on bringing the Bill before the House today. I compliment the Government on introducing Friday sittings to discuss private Members' Bills. However, I was disappointed by this morning's interaction. I do not want to bring the House into disrepute but it is very difficult when one votes on something at face value to discover it was inaccurate and totally untrue.

We are discussing the Bill and I thank Deputy Niall Collins and praise him because this is a brave stand to take. Every Deputy is entitled to make a contribution and I welcome all of the various viewpoints. We are here because the people choose various representatives. People on all sides are being honest.

I praise South Tipperary County Council, not for good PR purposes. I was a member of the county council in 1990 and from 1999 to 2007. Much progress was made in many areas but there are deficiencies in other areas. Like the previous speaker stated, one will not receive 100% from everybody, but one might receive 110% from some people and this is human nature. South Tipperary County Council introduced an environmental awards scheme 12 years ago which has been a tremendous success and there has been great engagement with the public and community groups including Tidy Towns and on initiatives such as the golden mile. The people and communities of south Tipperary came together with the local authority and FÁS to do great work and brought pride to the communities through the work done on a voluntary basis. Local authority officials attended meetings. When the new local area plans were published the planners attended meetings with communities in the evenings to discuss the plans and receive submissions. They engaged with the people and we must do this more and more.

This House also must engage with people and listen to them. There may be a future Friday sitting which I will not attend, but I am disappointed and cannot believe the lack of Deputies here today. The Bill has to do with local government and is important legislation. I have tabled a Bill on scrap metal which has not yet been chosen in the lottery system. I am also disappointed that we cannot vote today but that we must wait until Tuesday. If some of us had been thrown out this morning, which we nearly were, it could not be voted on until Tuesday. This is farcical as we would be in limbo for the weekend wondering whether we would miss serious issues such as committee meetings on environmental issues. I want to attend the committee meeting next Wednesday with the Minister. We have much to discuss and he will attend from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Prior to Christmas we were, quite rightly, going through the amendments slowly. We were trying to get answers from the Minister and his officials but were not succeeding. At the time, the Minister said he would bring us back two or three days after Christmas. We should have come back then but it will be ten days later when we will discuss the amendments that will affect people.

This Bill also affects people. I do not want to go back over what Deputy Ó Cuív stated but he hit the nail on the head. When he went to "Craggy" which had the smallest staff of any Department, with perhaps 50 or 60 people, it was an efficient Department and well-run. Over the years, Departments and local authorities have built up. The Minister, Deputy Hogan, will be aware, although he may not agree with me, that what really destroyed local authorities was the better local government programme which was one of those grand delusions drawn up by the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, and others. Shortly after its inception I described it as bitter local government because it alienated many staff in local authorities. Hard-working staff did not receive their due recognition or fair play. When I joined the local authority in 1990, a county manager, a county engineer, a county secretary and several area engineers ran the show. The Minister will know this better than I do. Now, there is a county manager, six directors of services and a plethora of layers of government. Not only is this bitter to the public but also to many members of staff. Morale was dealt a serious blow and never recovered because the system still pertains. The bonus system which was introduced was a disgrace. Who received bonuses? It was the director of services and managers but not the lad on the road with a shovel, the girls in the office or the water caretakers receiving phone calls in the middle of the night. The people at the top in the section received a bonus but the people who did the work, the front-line staff, were left out.

We have much to learn and much reform to do. No one is better able to do so than the Minister because he has been around for a long time. He has been in this House and in politics for much longer than I have. He laughed at some of what was said this morning and he is a jocose man - we will have more laughs, jokes and rows next week - but he knows better than I do what is wrong with the system. It is a pity when people go from this side of the House to the other that they leave it to the departmental officials. I will not go into a certain reply which was received but the conclusion was not written by the Minister; it came from the lads in the Department. This is the problem. I am not knocking officials per se and I work with the South Tipperary County Council officials on a daily basis-----

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