Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I cannot rise to speak about local government without paying tribute to Councillor Gary Wyse, a party colleague of ours who died very suddenly yesterday. He was an outstanding public servant, an outstanding councillor and a very proud Waterford man. I extend my sympathies and those of Deputy Fleming and our party to his family, his friends and his colleagues in Waterford.

I support everything Deputy Fleming has said. There are good elements to this Bill which can be welcomed and which have potential, but for me the glaring part of this Bill is an assault on local democracy. Rather than putting people first, it seems people are being left behind by this Bill. For me, that is represented in the abolition of town councils and the absolute ignorance of those in the Department and those who drafted the legislation of the invaluable role that a good, performing town council can play as an economic development unit and as a unit for citizen participation. It is represented in the fact that this will be lost in these new bizarre structures, particularly in rural constituencies.

There is a complete inconsistency and incoherence in the Bill which allows the people of Dublin, rightfully so, to have a plebiscite about the kind of mayor they want, and yet those of us who live in a town or borough council area will lose our mayor and our councillors without any consultation, but with the weight of the Government majority. One would have hoped that the lessons of a campaign run by Fine Gael a few weeks ago to reduce the number of politicians would have been learned, and that cognisance would have been taken of the fact that people will not be bought by that populist nonsense. Unfortunately, we have that campaign encapsulated in Government legislation on the abolition of town councils, as well as in other provisions that will undermine local participation and local democracy.

I never served on a local authority. I did not have the privilege of serving on either a town council or a county council, but I have seen very good town councils and very poor town councils in action over the years in my previous job, and as a citizen. Unfortunately, this Bill throws the whole lot out due to the underperformance of a minority of councils. When the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1999 was brought in to define a town council and upgrade urban district councils, it was ridiculous not to give them any extra power at the time. I know it was done by a party colleague, but the issue should have been grasped then. In my county, we have three town councils in Castlebar, Westport and my own town of Ballina. In the past 15 years, Ballina Town Council has been responsible for pioneering many fine developments, both physically and within the spirit of the town. It has acted as a foundation upon which many groups have built and have used council funds to support their own initiative. The councillors, who generally leave their party jerseys outside the door, and the very good officials have a shared ambition for the town. They implemented that ambition and we now have a very different town than we had. It is noteworthy that in a time of very high attrition among local government politicians, all the outgoing members of Ballina Town Council who put themselves forward for re-election in 2004 and 2009 were re-elected. That shows the regard and the respect the people of Ballina have for them and for what they have done. They challenged them, but at least they saw fit to challenge them. Under these new proposals, we will be luckier to see a dodo than a councillor in some parts of the country.

The other big example of a successful town council is Westport, and this example is used right around the country. Westport did not just happen. Westport today is a town we all admire as a tourism centre, a centre for world class industry and a model of community participation through things like Tidy Towns-----

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