Marcella Corcoran Kennedy (Offaly, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to raise my proposal with the Minister. As we all know, public consultation is one of the most important activities both national and local government and State agencies can undertake. By consulting effectively with the citizen and stakeholders we improve on the making of policy and its implementation. It is essential that public consultation is done in a very accurate way as it is so important that we get it right. The consultation process increases transparency and improves engagement with the people. The information gleaned from public consultations means that policy is more informed and accurate and that, if changes are to be made, citizens are more aware of them.

In recent years, both locally and nationally, various types of public consultation have been carried out. For example, at local level, when local area plans are being carried out, a local authority must try to communicate with the local citizenry that it will happen and try to reach people in as many ways as possible. A similar process is undertaken for the county development plan.

Currently, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is doing a consultation on the disability allowance payment and other schemes in terms of whether they should be reconfigured and how. The question is who knows about that. A person might be unaware of the situation unless he or she is a member of an advocacy group. The consultation is taking place on the welfare.iewebsite and unless a person is affected directly, he or she might not know about it although what that person might have to say is valuable. To participate in a meaningful way, a person would have to make a submission him or herself or have someone do so on his or her behalf. However, the only way that person can make a submission is to know about it in the first place.

My proposal is that for the citizen to understand and access public consultation, we should have a single access portal on the Internet. Each county could have a separate access point showing both local and national consultations. For example, in my area if I click on County Offaly, I could see what consultations are being carried out by the local authority but I could also see what the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, the Arts Council or Fáilte Ireland are doing at a national level. Therefore, I could make a submission on a particular issue if I so wished. At the moment I believe reaching the citizen is very piecemeal. Given how technology is moving, it must be possible for us to have a single online portal for public consultation that would allow people to look at their local area, region or nationally and see what is relevant to them. Currently, I do not believe we are not getting good quality, all-encompassing information. We must take a targeted approach.

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