Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister's commitment on this matter. Sinn Féin was concerned that membership of the CPG could include a person who had not even received one vote while five or six councillors, who between them may have obtained 10,000 or 15,000 votes, could not attend a CPG meeting.

Amendment No. 38 seeks the inclusion of the words "political grouping and non-aligned councillors". This is not an issue by which Sinn Féin is affected. I will give an example of where it might have an effect. At one stage the majority of councillors on Clonmel town council were from non-aligned groups or not registered members of a political party. I accept it is not possible when a council includes representatives of the hard right and the extremely hard right and so on to accommodate every grouping in the chamber. We all know that in such cases groups of councillors come together and seek to get one of their members elected to the CPG.

I have been a member of a CPG. As a member, one has the inside track in terms of what is going on, or at least some of it. I have also been a member of a council and leader of a group which had no representative on the CPG, which meant we never knew what was going on. Any information we got in this regard was from the newspapers. In fairness, towards the end of my term on the council the county manager at the time put in place a procedure under which we were provided with a monthly written report on what was happening, which was a welcome change. In my experience, membership of local authorities and county councils is usually made up of representatives from three groups, two large parties, a number of smaller parties and a couple of Independents. The Minister needs to do something to reflect this. Perhaps he would spell out his intentions in this regard.

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