Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----and so on. That happened because of the actions of the town council back in the 1970s. Deputy Ring was a member of that council and he was on occasion able to leave the party jersey outside the door. He himself would admit that he got his grounding in politics on the town council. What he has brought to the party in the last two years is built on the initiative of a town council that worked together, but now that is gone.

What will this be replaced by? It will be replaced by a municipal district. There are currently nine town councillors in Westport, but there will be seven councillors in the municipal district, extending from Leenane in the west to Belderrig in the north, which is a distance of 150 km. These people will be drawn from all different areas, with a broad range of focus and no sense of direction or commitment to the town. Their time will be spread over a very large area and we will lose that really important link to local authority, local government and democracy in general. Apparently, this is putting people first.

People do not get a sense of this at the moment, but in two years when they find that rates bills are increasing, when local organisations find out that the community fund, as defined in the legislation, is spread over hundreds of miles rather than in the town, and they cannot get the small bit of funding for festivals or local competitions and so on, they will then know the difference. It is not a case of getting rid of politicians; it is a case of taking away a layer of government that we will eventually put back in. Some Minister will come before this House in ten years or so to put the town council structure back into the system, because this is not going to work.

If it is good enough for the people of Dublin to have a direct say in what their future local government will look like, then I think we should have the same say. The Minister of State should have that say in Sligo, Deputy Deasy should have that say in Dungarvan, and so on, about what they want in their towns and counties. There is a specific part of the Bill which provides for a plebiscite for Dublin and if the Minister believes that this Bill is putting people first and he still wants to take away the introductory layer of government from people, then he should put it to a plebiscite in the towns that are affected so he can test his case. I know the Government is probably referendum shy at the moment, but he should have a go at this one.

Section 6 deals with the community and local development companies. Just over 20 years ago they were set up to fill a gap that local authorities were not filling at the time. It was ground-up development involving small projects and using the Leader money that was identified at the time in a visionary move by the then Commissioner, Mr. Ray MacSharry - it was typical of him to see that. Those companies have flourished. While I accept there have been difficulties with some of them, just because a few have difficulties we should not throw out the whole lot.

The Bill provides for a local government and central government takeover over of the local development sector. The employees and CEOs who do great work will now become local authority employees responsible to the local authority. There is a sense that because there is the usual provision that certain individuals from various groups will be appointed to the boards it will be fine. It is claimed that that is local government but it is not. That is local development being hijacked by central government through the guise of local government and local democracy. That will do considerable damage and we will again need to return to put that structure back in. It was set up in that way because there was a need for a bottom-up approach to local development, whereas what we have here is a top-down approach.

Not even Sir Humphrey could have come up with the wording for the process for rate equalisation in the Bill. It is a ten-year period but the authority can decide differently if it wants. That is not how business works. Over the years many town councils have managed to keep the rate base low while the county councils have a higher base. Many businesses in towns are already being hammered by this bizarre revaluation process. I met a businessperson today who must pay 40% more in rates next year because of this revaluation process. That business will need to get a 3% increase in turnover to pay the rates alone. Yet this legislation provides for an increase in rates, which is what will happen in most town council areas. Even though there is some deliberately woolly phrasing in the Bill about it being over ten years, I envisage it happening much quicker than that and that needs to be amended on Committee Stage.

It is not possible to put people first by taking away the tier of government closest to them. It is not possible to put people first by taking away the direct interaction that an elected body has with its community and community organisations. At a time when there is such low regard for elected politicians, town councils allow elected politicians to be a fulcrum of development and something positive. This is destroying that development and destroying that spirit. We cannot support it.

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