Dáil debates

Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Local Government (Establishment of Town Councils Commission) Bill 2017: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

10:20 pm

Photo of Marc MacSharryMarc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Cassells, on introducing this legislation. In 2013, difficult as things were throughout the country, the move of the then Minister, Phil Hogan, came as a surprise to me. We can understand why sometimes in politics we might play the ball. We can even understand at times that we might play the man, but why the then Minister had to dig up the pitch as well is beyond me and certainly undermined democracy in our country. We often complain about the ivory tower where up to this Administration these Houses were subservient to the Cabinet of the day. This was only exacerbated by the actions of Phil Hogan in removing the democratic mandate of communities throughout the country.

We did indeed save money - a whole €15 million - but how much did that cost in terms of the value to communities throughout the country? While I know proposals from our party and others have suggested we might have a threshold of urban centres with populations of 7,000 or even 10,000, I would ask that if this commission is set up, it should consider going even lower than that. We can see the value to communities like those in south County Donegal where there were town councils in Ballyshannon and Bundoran. In other counties and other towns throughout the country, there was value for relatively low costs to those communities in ensuring their community had a sense of ownership of the policy platform being pursued by the town council, the county council and passing on to us here as Members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann. It is imperative that the Government embraces this and sets up the commission. Within a year we will have tangible proposals to enhance democracy throughout the country.

This evening, once again, we have allowed an independent commission to decimate counties throughout the country in redrawing constituencies. I was from the almost multinational constituency of Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan and Donegal. While I am pleased we have reunited Cavan, we have decimated Roscommon by putting part of north County Roscommon in with Sligo, Leitrim and south Donegal. While I know it is a matter for another day, we need a constitutional referendum to rebalance our approach to having a representative democracy in this country. It is not just town councils, which this Bill addresses, but if we continue as we are, long after we are all gone there will be 120 Deputies on the eastern seaboard and nobody anywhere else in Ireland. We must come up with a formula that respects county boundaries. I challenge the Minister and the Minister of State to begin that process.

I commend the Bill to the House and hope the Government sees the merit of repairing the pitch that Phil Hogan dug up unnecessarily in 2013.

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