Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

No problem. It was that a petition of more than 10% of people in a local authority would trigger a plebiscite on having a directly elected mayor. In fairness, the Minister of State is moving from 10% to 15%. That is a step in the right direction. I would still argue for 10%. It is a serious undertaking to get 10% of electors to sign a petition in a proper manner that can be checked. A serious operation would be required to get that many people. In Dublin, it would take the guts of 100,000 people to get 10%. It is not an unreasonably low threshold and even 15% is unreasonably high. It is a barrier. We want to encourage groups to say they should have a directly elected mayor. This is a route to do that involving people in local democracy.

If the decision is made by people to campaign in this way and they are successful, we will have to come back and not repeat some of the mistakes being made here and ensure we have mayors with substantial power, taken not from elected councillors but from unelected CEOs, as they are currently constituted. We should have recallable mayors. That was one of the amendments that was ruled out. We could have plebiscites for people. As mayors are answerable to and elected by the people, they could be recalled by the people through the same mechanism used for plebiscites to establish a directly elected mayor. They should be on the average wage of ordinary workers, as opposed to the high salaries foreseen. While 15% is better than 20%, I will press the amendment for 10%.

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