Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree that this is a very important Bill and I commend Deputy Cassells and his colleagues for putting it forward. I agree with previous speakers that we have to undo a lot of the damage done at every tier by Phil Hogan through political measures he introduced in 2014. Those measures were inspired by the fairly simplistic analysis that getting rid of political institutions was, per se, a good thing in order to assuage the anger of the public at how the political system had led the country into a crisis. However, the measures actually undermined our political system, weakened our democratic institutions and need to be reversed.

The action taken needs to be reversed at city level. I do not know why the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy John Paul Phelan, is not here. I thought it would be central to his brief to be here to listen to the arguments and make his own case. That said, I wish him well in his new position. However, I cannot believe that the Government, having killed the idea of a directly-elected Mayor of Dublin in 2013 or 2014 by setting up a mechanism that was designed to fail, the Minister of State thinks that Dublin now needs four different mayors. New York has five boroughs but is run by one Mayor. London has 32 boroughs but is run by one Mayor. Dublin is a capital city that has to compete on the world stage. It will not be able to do so if the four boroughs or council areas of Dublin are to compete with each other. That has damaged this city for the past 20 or 30 years. It is utter insanity.

Similarly, at a regional level, the division of the country outside Dublin by Phil Hogan in 2014 into two massive regions, one running from Dundalk to Louisburgh and the other from Bray to Ballybunion, was utterly insane. There was no coherence or strategic logic to it. The country needs at least five regions. A place such as Waterford should be the centre of a new region in the south east and there should be a region for south-west Munster. It can be divided in different ways but we do not need the current configuration.

The issue then comes down to town council level, which is the key issue here. Again, the town councils should have been reformed rather than gotten rid of. The boundaries should have been changed so that the likes of Killarney Town Council, for example, would not have ended as a kind of 19th century phenomenon where the boundary ended somewhere out the Muckross Road when, in the reality of the 21st century, people who should be covered by the council area live far beyond that point. Council areas should have included the surrounding districts rather than solely the town itself.

I support the points made by Deputy Michael Collins. God help us, but Clonakilty is the best example of how this should be done. Its independent action in setting up voluntary town councils which meet, as the Deputy said, on a monthly basis and the mayor of which attended 200 functions within the past year, has strengthened the area. It is no wonder that Clonakilty is such a successful, vibrant and attractive town if such spirit is present within it. Such a voluntary approach is one of the mechanisms that could be considered in terms of bringing back town councils. It does not have to be a big institutional arrangement with a big budget but it needs statutory recognition and the voluntary next tier down of democratic systems needs to be established. The model provided by Clonakilty should be replicated everywhere.

I regret that I do not have the Minister's speech because I wanted to inspect the detail of what he was suggesting as I could not catch it at the time. I will read it tomorrow. As I understand it, he is proposing a municipal district system, which is a continuation of local area committees, on one of which I used to serve and know that they work and are not bad structures. However, there is a need for a tier beneath that and something more than that. There is a need for an institution that allows people to be drawn into politics. A voluntary district council system would do so.

I commend the intent behind the Fianna Fáil Bill. The Minister said he might have to amend the legislation and it may not be a bad thing to get into the process of thinking through this legislation in a flexible way. That is the type of really important and useful work that should be done in this House.

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