Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. I never served on a town council, but my late father served as chair of Ballina Town Council twice and before he went into public life served as town engineer, a position also occupied by my grandfather. From that vantage, I note the debate we had last night is absolutely relevant to this debate. Town councils, urban councils and borough corporations were the most effective providers of public housing in this country. They delivered it and they minded it, when they were properly resourced. This is a good step in the context of a housing and homelessness debate. We are also holding this debate in the week of Tidy Towns. Again, the urban councils, town councils and borough corporations were the initial providers. They gave people the chance to take ownership of the issues and challenges facing their towns and to exploit their towns' cultural and economic opportunities.

In the four years since that has been gone, towns have weakened. I heard Deputy Howlin say the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment wanted this for years. The Department got its way. Deputy Howlin does not see the damage that has been done on a daily basis in towns throughout the country because he got his way. We do, because we are the people on the ground. This year, that damage resulted in community groups in towns in Mayo, such as Tidy Towns, graveyard management and tourism bodies being forced to wait until July to get their community funds because the county executive decided to use the town budgets as pawns in a budget battle with councillors. Organisations suffered because of that. That would not happen if we had town councils with their own planning powers, made up of nine people known in their communities, or whatever the figure in this Bill is.

The Minister's lack of ambition for towns throughout the country is ridiculous. He seems to be afraid to restore their power because Fine Gael does not like town councils. It never did well in them because it never understood them. The Minister has the chance to undo the damage his constituency colleague did in 2013. He has the chance to restore Kilkenny's reputation by restoring town councils.

See this speech in context