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

I acknowledge the spirit and intent of what Deputy Catherine Murphy is seeking to do here. I believe the Bill caters fairly well for her objective, particularly through the establishment of a national oversight and audit commission. This commission will scrutinise local government performance in fulfilling national, regional and local mandates. It promotes value for money where State funds are channelled through local government and the development of best practice and enhanced efficiency in the performance of local government functions. In terms of this latter point, this will achieve the Deputy's objective to ensure the functions of local government are kept under review.

In this regard, like Deputy Catherine Murphy, I strongly support devolution of functions to local government. It is clear, as I said earlier about the other amendments, that the Bill provides opportunities for significant devolution in terms of enterprise support and local and community development. It provides for further scope for further devolution from national level through the extension of section 72 of the principal Act to include all Departments and State agencies.

I am also glad to be able to state to the Deputy that at yesterday's Cabinet meeting, the Government agreed to a local government proofing procedure in respect of any new public services at local level. This will have the effect that in the future, local government must be considered first as a service delivery mechanism at local level. In terms of the overall review of the reform programme, we are also strengthening the representative structure for local authority elected members, including the development of a unified association and enabling the members to have a more effective input into the development of policy nationally.

The Bill also provides specifically for meetings with the members' representative associations. I also note the point raised by the Deputy during our last debate whereby the language of this amendment comes from the European Charter for Local Self Government. I remind her that we have recently been the subject of a review by the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities which welcomed the efforts for greater devolution enshrined in this Bill and called for accelerated implementation of the action programme to address the issue of inadequate subsidiarity and scope within the Irish local government system. I again make clear that criticisms made in that report, which was finalised last July, relate to the existing position and not, as some have misleadingly suggested, to this Bill. The Council of Europe has confirmed this. That said, a key objective of this reform programme is to reduce significantly the number of structures and processes and we are doing this with regard to the number of duplicative administrative and political structures through the replacement of town councils with municipal districts and in the mergers of Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary. It would be inconsistent of us to support the proposed establishment of an advisory panel in that context.

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