Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The economic development and enterprise SPC is welcome but there is no mention of it in the SLA. The SLA states that the evaluation and approvals committee will have a chair, officials and a representative of Enterprise Ireland. Those five individuals will be appointed by the city or county manager in consultation of the head of the LEO. There will therefore be no direct input from the elected members who are responsible to the people.

The LEOs will be asked to nominate a chair of an evaluation and approvals committee to sit on the Enterprise Ireland jobs expansion fund committee. It sounds good. This position will be rotated every six to 12 months in consultation with the City and County Managers' Association. So they will have the power. There is no role in the SLA for the proposed SPC, so the LEO could go off and do its own thing because there is no formal reporting role for it.

I welcome the SPC which I think is a good idea. However, the power we are giving through this legislation to unelected officials is, once again, undermining the role of local elected members. We will spend from now to 23 May trying to convince people to participate in local government, yet in this Bill the role is being undermined and diminished. It will establish another quango which is only informally answerable to the directly elected members.

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