Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not sure what the Government is doing. If it is agreeing with the amendment, that is positive. I have already spoken on this issue in the Dáil. If the Government is agreeing with the amendment, I welcome that agreement. I thank the Seanad for looking at this so diligently and for taking on board the arguments made in the Dáil. We are asking for the deletion of the sections set out in the amendment not on the basis of being negative, but on the basis of the reports that were produced for the Government. There were three reports - a basic report and two interim reports following on from it. This report said that giving funding to the city and county councils was a necessary precondition. It said that this funding was absolutely fundamental before any changes took place. It also recognised that the local authorities were working very well on the ground and already had existing shared services. That was acknowledged.

Furthermore, since that report was released my attention has been drawn to research carried out by the economics department of the National University of Ireland, Galway. It reviewed the literature relating to this matter. I draw the Minister of State's attention to this research. It is absolutely non-political. It was produced by the university and made available to anybody who wants it. The research evidence examining scale economies in the Irish case is virtually absent. The proposal came from Government to merge Galway City Council with Galway County Council on a number of bases but primarily because it would be more cost-efficient and because of economies of scale. This research points out that evidence for this is virtually absent. It goes on to point to the notable exception of the work carried out by Dr. Mark Callanan in 2014, which raised concerns about the risks of intuition relating to the perceived benefits that flow from bigger councils and local authority mergers.

The paper goes on to look at international research. The most basic conclusion of this research is that the evidence is inconclusive. Some research says "Yes" and some research says "No". The paper points out this great divergence. In a sense England and Scotland are outliers because their local authorities are much bigger whereas many such authorities in other parts of Europe and the world are much smaller and work very efficiently.

It is a very bad step from a democratic perspective - and I am glad that the Government has now gone back on it - to increase the size of local authorities on the basis of no evidence and in blatant disregard of the Lisbon treaty. The Government constantly quotes the treaty in the Chamber for many reasons but it fails to comment on Article 10, which talks about decisions being made as close as possible to the people on the ground. If the Government is in agreement with the amendment put forward by the Seanad, I welcome that. Any future proposal in respect of Galway should come forward on a case-by-case basis and the Government should set out why it is necessary, why it is proposed, and on what it is based. A fundamental condition is the giving of adequate resources and staff to the two local authorities, which are struggling on the ground.

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