John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The paper on municipal governance, which was proposed by the Department and agreed by the Government, is currently before the Oireachtas joint committee. I do not think it has yet got a chance to discuss it, but it goes into some of the detail to which the Deputy refers. Specifically identified is the return of some version of the old block grant that town councils used to have and which I would say was part of what the Deputy alluded to in his supplementary question. The paper also proposes that the members of the municipal borough district would be in a position to allocate these funds, which would be different from other municipal districts that do not have former town council areas contained within them.

To give the Deputy a flavour of some of the other things that are included in the paper, one of the measures that was taken on board by the boundary review committee was to ensure that urban centres would be strongly represented at full council level. The paper refers to a number of towns. One in particular on the west coast used to have a nine-seater town council and a population of over 30,000, but in the last local election only two county councillors were returned from within the town area. As a result of the redrawing of the boundary now, as well as the town and its immediate hinterland, no other rural areas are included, which will ensure that there will be seven councillors elected from that particular town to that local authority. Along with the possible return of the block grant system-----

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