Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State knows, a plebiscite was held in 2019 in three city areas to decide whether to have a directly elected mayor.

Waterford was one of those and I voted in that. I actually voted against the proposal at the time. I could not understand exactly what this person was going to be doing in terms of the way the job was being framed. What I saw in essence was a job in which people were being given accountability but not the authority to get things done. I am not sure that is not still the position at the moment.

I will not speak at length on this Bill because others have highlighted many of its inadequacies. However, I am quite happy as a Waterford man to sit back now and let Limerick implement this policy and see how it goes. That is what I think we should do. I understand there are a number of amendments to be tabled possibly on Report Stage. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

If I take as an example my local authority in Waterford, I think people would know this in the House that we have a very dynamic chief executive. The idea is that we go out and pluck somebody possibly from the council body, and we have very able-bodied people there, but would they have that skill set? That is a question I would ask of any local authority that is taking this on. To me, it appears that anybody can stand for election. They can nominate themselves and potentially get elected. Ultimately, the Government is now giving them the responsibility for framing the strategic management policy of the authority going forward. Certainly, there is accountability because they can be voted out unlike some of the chief executives and some of the other officers of the local authority. It does speak to me, however. These are very serious positions. That has been recognised in terms of the remuneration on offer, which is equivalent to a Minister of State. Certainly, the mayor can take on programme managers and advisers and that is all very helpful. There has to be more head scratching done regarding this legislation, however. It is more that the spirit of the legislation is possibly fine but in actual fact, when we get down to the reality in terms of the quality of the people who may be thrown into this position, there is a significant cause for concern.

The other thing I noticed is the election expenses that are allowable to this office. It seems that anybody who is going for the mayoral programme can spend up to €72,000 in recoupable expenses unlike a Teachta Dála. That seems to be an awful lot of money, by the way, to put into this programme.

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