Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree in principle with the Deputy that councillors will be covering a wider geographical area and we will have a look at resource supports to ensure that the people in local government are able to do the job for which they are elected. They will have a lot more responsibility and devolved functions, as the Deputy will see when the legislation is published.

The Deputy is making the case about the size of the areas. I draw his attention to the Sinn Féin submission to the local electoral area boundary committee, which proposed 123 local electoral areas. This is 14 fewer than the 137 local electoral areas that would arise based on the committee's recommendations, which were published recently. The smallest local electoral area that the boundary committee could recommend had six members. Following the review there are to be 67 such areas. Had the Sinn Féin proposal been accepted, there would have been only 14 of these six-member local electoral areas. Most of the recommended local electoral areas in the boundary committee's report have six and seven members, which is in contrast to Sinn Féin's proposal.

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