Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Seanad made a very wise decision. The people of Galway were basically being asked to buy a pig in a poke. A document was prepared by some experts but, as is shown by the university document, it was not based on any real hard evidence. These experts proposed the general principle of a merger. As I pointed out to the Minister time and again, they also said that nothing should happen until the money issue is resolved. That issue has certainly not been resolved in the case of Galway. It is also fair to say that we seem to be forever tinkering with structures in this country. I was not all that long mar Theachta Dála do Ghaillimh Thiar when I met an eminent management consultant. He made a very wise observation to me. He said that we are forever tinkering with the structures but that maybe it is time to start making the structures we have work.

My experience of local authorities is that some big ones are very inefficient and some are quite efficient while some very small local authorities are highly efficient and others are not so efficient. It seems to me that often the quality of management and leadership, and not the size of a thing, are what make it work or not work. It is the same with nations: some big nations are not very good at all while some small nations are tremendously effective in servicing their citizens and we can get the very opposite of that effect.

If we are to change the structures in Galway it is fair to say there are three big choices we have to make. One is the status quo. The second is what I call the "Cork solution" where the experts have said to amalgamate but the politicians have said no, that will not work and then they plan to extend the city boundary. The third choice is the merger. Before we come to a conclusion on that we need some answers to some questions. In any new arrangement we would need to know the financial arrangements pertaining to each scenario. We would also need to know what powers in an amalgamated arrangement would devolve to the municipal authorities. In this case the whole of Galway city would just be a municipal authority. As a representative for Galway city I know that the people there are very curious and anxious to know what residual powers would be left in the county.

There are also all of the rural municipal authorities that are screaming out for more power. When town councils were abolished they were meant to be replaced with strong, powerful, municipal, statutory authorities. The argument against the town council is around why towns should get something the rural countryside does not get. They all need the same services. It was not ever meant to be a recipe for centralisation into the heart of the county.

Before we go any further we need an independent, objective study to work out how good the amalgamation has been in Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary. We need to see if it worked out equally well across the whole of the new territory. Were there marginal areas doing less well? How did the socially disadvantaged areas in the urban areas do, for example? It is not just in totality but also for each constituent part and with particular reference to those who got left behind in marginal, more isolated rural areas and in socially disadvantaged urban areas that are continually left behind even in the cities.

If we are being told that we should accept the report on Galway I would like to know why the expert report on Cork was not accepted. Galway is nearly as big and is certainly as diverse as Cork. Linguistically Galway is a lot more diverse than much of Cork, and geographically it is nearly three counties; county east Galway - as I call it - Galway city and the county of Connemara. County Connemara has very little in common even with east Galway, whatever about the city. Why was the report not done in Cork? We need to look at this.

Representation is a big issue. There will be 57 representatives on the new authority if one was just to add them together. Does anyone really believe in the long term that we would have a local authority of 57 members? Does anybody really believe that it would be an effective council chamber in which to make decisions? The problem is that if it is decided to reduce the representation, and one extrapolates in the 40,000 extra people who are supposed to be situated in and around Galway city - say within a ten mile radius from Eyre Square - how much representation would there be in 20 or 25 years in the more sparsely populated parts of the county such as Woodford, Portumna and Dunmore in the very north of the county, and in the western parts of Connemara?

If the whole area is amalgamated I am concerned that disadvantaged urban areas would be neglected. Parts of our society where there are huge social difficulties are socially deprived areas where many people do not want to live. I remember the first time I went canvassing for the Seanad. I went to Limerick and I was brought into Southill. I have been in many places in Dublin - I grew up there - and I have been everywhere in Galway but I have never seen anything as deprived as Southill was at that time.

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