Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. As a former councillor and mayor of Fingal County Council, we have a tremendously weak system of local government, which is not the fault of local authority members; rather, it is because authority has not been delegated to local authority members. As Deputy Lahart outlined, even when local authority members want something done, they are prevented from doing it by the unelected officials. This must end.

Without a lot more work and information in the public domain, holding a plebiscite in May in the cities and counties outlined in the provisions brought forward by the Minister of State will be difficult but not impossible. Therefore, we must move quickly. The matter of Dublin city and county must be managed very carefully. While I really look forward to the debate in any form of citizens' assembly or convention, the underlying principle of my difficulty and that of the members of Fingal County Council when we rejected the previous ill-thought-out and weak proposal for a mayor of Dublin still stands. My difficulty with what had been proposed for Dublin was related to the issue highlighted by Deputy Broughan. We would have had a mayor who would have overruled local authority members-----

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