Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree quite a bit with the spirit of the amendment. It speaks to what we envisaged at the outset when we considered what this new office was going to be for Limerick on foot of the plebiscite. I reiterate that Limerick alone opted to have a directly elected mayor, whereas Cork and Waterford, which also had the opportunity, chose not to pursue this possibility. Limerick did so on the basis of quite little information. There was a notion at the time of what a directly elected mayor would be. The Minister of State's predecessor in office, the former Minister of State, Deputy John Paul Phelan, set out how he saw the role. It was very broad. Certainly, there was not much detail back then. We have come a long way.

I commend the Minister of State on bringing the Bill to this point and narrowing it down to what it is. It certainly is not something we all agree with. We had a debate on Committee Stage and the Minister of State defended his position on the Bill quite well. It is a good step in the right direction. I have moved my position on it. At the outset I would have wanted this Bill to give a lot of power to the new mayor in Limerick, whoever that might be. The combination of the work of the implementation advisory group, the work of the Ministers and his officials, and the work of Oireachtas Members has got us to this point where we have quite a good Bill. I am very happy. I believe it was my suggestion at an early stage that we would have a review process built into the Bill.

While there is much to be looked at in Deputy Quinlivan's amendments, I believe they fall into the review process which we will have after three years. I see some conflict between what Deputy Quinlivan would like the mayor to do and national policy. I am not sure how that would be managed if this amendment is accepted, particularly in the area of waste management. That is a very complex one to get right and needs to be considered very carefully.

By and large, how the office is set up now, as set out in the legislation, gets the balance right. A lot of the intent of amendment No. 9 will be captured in the final reckoning. I would like to say that I agree with much of the spirit of amendment No. 9 but will not be supporting it.

See this speech in context