Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Troy for proposing this Bill. We must put the citizens relying on local government and those we represent at the heart of everything we do. The desire here is to ensure the large range of services provided by local government can be delivered more effectively and efficiently. This legislation is to be welcomed in that regard.

I am also sure, and I am sure my colleagues in this House will agree, that local government provides an enormous and diverse range of services and functions. At the last count, that figure was in excess 1,100 services and functions being provided to customers and to citizens. The Local Government Management Agency provides details of all these excellent services in its service catalogue. We recently launched the localgov.ie website, which is a fantastic resource for many people when accessing these services across many areas, from housing to planning, environmental, community, arts and culture, leisure and recreation and active travel.

While the Bill seeks to impose a blanket statutory limit of 20 days for local authorities to respond to queries, given the number and variety of local government services, I would caution against any such timeline being too prescriptive. I am sure we can work with Deputy Troy on that. We have many excellent customer service initiatives already in place across local government. To Deputy Ó Murchú's point around the housing adaptation grant, which was an important announcement today, I acknowledge the work of my predecessor, the Minister of State, Deputy Kieran O'Donnell and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, in that regard. As was said, we have increased the thresholds and increased the grant levels by up to 30%. We would expect a revision of the regulations to implement the new recommendations to happen early in 2025. We hope the new scheme would be up and running in quarter 1 of 2025.

Reverting to the Bill in respect of customer server charters and the formal complaints procedure which is already in place, details of which are readily available for members of the public on their local authority website, the objectives of such a measure aligning with those of the Bill and adherence to these charters and established channels achieves the same aims. I certainly will be open to further understanding how we can comply with these obligations, strengthen them and go above and beyond. With regard to recourse to the Ombudsman, a highly effective organ of the State, where they are dissatisfied with the administration of local authority services and have exhausted all procedures of the relative local authority, the Bill seeks to give them a direct route on the expiry of the statutory 20-day timeline. The Bill will need to balance the proposal against the potential impact it may have upon the resources of the Ombudsman to ensure there is not over-duplication and that office does not become overwhelmed by relatively minor local authority issues. This could distract from an already burdened workload.

I had the opportunity to sit on the Committee of Public Accounts for the past four years and have no doubt that, as the watchdog of public finances, it is extremely important in holding public bodies to account and ensuring the best outcomes for the taxpayer. I would stress that there is an appreciation and respect for similar roles that our elected members perform within their own elective chambers. Their primary oversight and governance is within their local authorities. Certainly we need to review the independence which is contained and protected in primary legislation. This critical point will need to be addressed within this Bill also. I am sure everyone will be in agreement that further discussion on this Bill will need to take into account considerations and concerns of the Council of Europe regarding central supervision of local government in Ireland in its recent monitoring report on Ireland's adherence to the European charter on local self-government. As I said earlier, we will not oppose the Bill and we look forward to further discussion on Committee Stage.

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