James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Fianna Fáil's support of this Bill. It is similar to a Fianna Fáil Bill that was produced last year. Some 80 town councils and almost 750 town councillors were effectively abolished by the last Government. This idea was not merely created or endorsed, it was actually championed as a populist move. It fundamentally undermined democracy. We were told it would save a lot of money. That obviously never happened because every level of staff that was there before was kept on, and rightly so as they were needed. The only thing that was taken out was one level of democracy.

We heard from Deputy Cassells that there is now only one councillor for every 5,000 people and those councillors, especially those based in the towns, are massively overstretched. One can see that from talking to any of the councillors dealing with those major towns. Why is that? It is because we used to have another layer of local democracy. In those towns, councillors were councillors who had no ambition to be county councillors or Deputies. They were solely and purely interested in their local town. They were always on the ground and if there was an issue with lights or footpaths one could meet with them. They knew who their engineer was. They would meet their engineer later that day, and that engineer would be able to sort out the problem. One now has to approach a county councillor who has to go to the town where the county council is based. The request goes into the abyss and one may or may not hear about it again. The council might have to contact some third party contractor, or Irish Water as the case may be, to solve the problem.

Local government spreads democracy. It has been said that without local government we do not have democracy. That is very much the case. I very much want to see the return of our town councils. I was proud to serve on a town council for five years. It was a very effective town council that had a balanced budget. The loss of those councils is an absolute shame on this democracy.

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