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

There is nothing wrong with our councillors. They do not have the authority they should have. My difficulty lies in the fact that a celebrity candidate could be elected, a point mentioned by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. When someone runs for election as Dublin city mayor, it will be like the European elections or a presidential election. That person will obviously use his or her platform to either stay in the job for years or catapult himself or herself into Dáil Éireann and other offices. I am not sure if this would be of benefit to the people of Dublin city. However, I was not talking about Dublin only but about the concept of mayoralties.

We need to identify what the roles would be. The concept of retaining the post of chief executive, albeit under the title of director general, is wrong. The mayor would be that person and I do not think we should create a ministerial function. We should create a position of mayor, rather than duplicate what is done in other countries. There are directors of services across local authorities. They should be the ones who would provide for co-ordination between departments and the office of mayor. As Deputy Eamon Ryan and the Minister of State pointed out, the right thing to do would be to form a cabinet, including various functional departments within each local authority, that would be headed by a councillor elected by the council, as is the case in the strategic policy committees. The roles and functions should be transparent and authoritative. It should be absolute that decisions would be made and that people would be responsible directly to the mayor. Councillors should have a budgetary function in order that they could hold the mayor to account because otherwise one would only have a say every five years, by which time the city or county could be in a mess. It is imperative that there be that interface between councillors.

The question of pay for local authority members and mayors is important. I would hate to create a mayor of Cork city or county or Limerick city or county who would be paid less than the role deserved, which would be at chief executive or county manager level.

On the interface with other service providers, Deputy Wallace was incredibly cynical and did not make one positive contribution to this discussion, apart from referencing the federal system in the United States. Of course, when Irish people think about the position of mayor, they think about that system. Unfortunately, we do not have a federal system, but having control over An Garda Síochána or at least having clout with Irish Water is incredibly important. Chairing the joint policing committee would not be good enough as the mayor would have to have some interface with policing, even if it was a little beyond what we already do as public representatives.

Deputy O'Dowd spoke about being a mayor in County Louth in the future if he was ever "retired" - his word, not mine - from this House. If he was able to call to see the chief superintendent in the Louth division on foot of the seizure of drugs worth €950,000, as happened yesterday, nobody in County Louth would mind one bit. They would be happy that the mayor of one of the major towns in the county was taking direct control of and interest in the matter. It does not have to undermine the role of the Commissioner, but there should be some thoughtful way to create an interface.

See this speech in context