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

We are all aware of the controversy that arose last year in relation to the Garth Brooks concert which ran into difficulties with local residents in Croke Park. That led to Dublin City Council imposing conditions limiting the number of concerts, among other things, with which the promoters of the event were dissatisfied, and it was cancelled. While I am not dismissing the concerns of the residents, much concern was voiced about the incident. Not only did it have an impact on people who had bought tickets and were disappointed at the cancellation, including people from overseas, but it also had considerable economic consequences in respect of cancelled hotel bookings and the overall level of spending that such an event would have generated, including from overseas visitors.

I can see where the proposals outlined in this Bill are coming from. However, I have some concerns regarding how it might impact on the democratic decision making of local authorities. The elected members of local authorities should have more power in respect of such matters than they do at present. Currently, city and county managers are able to make decisions not only without having to take account of the views of local elected representatives, who legally constitute the council, but often against their express wishes.

Regarding the Garth Brooks concerts, Dublin city councillors had to resort to tabling emergency motions to attempt to influence the conditions under which the license for the events was being granted by the council planners. There should surely be a more democratic and transparent manner of making such decisions so that there would be no need for ministerial intervention as proposed in this Bill.

There have been issues in local authorities around the country in which similar disregard was shown to the views of elected representatives. Those of us who have come through the local authority system have all experienced that. In Dublin we had a situation a few years ago in which there was significant cross-party opposition, including from the Government parties, on the city council to a waste incinerator.

That opposition was totally ignored and a decision was taken by the city manager to go ahead with the project.

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government has considerable power. We have seen what the Minister has done in the past 24 hours and what both the Minister and the Minister of State are capable of, or what the Labour Party and Fine Gael are capable of.

See this speech in context