Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

Like my colleagues on all sides of the House, I welcome the Minister. I also applaud him for his reforming zeal. He follows in a very impressive tradition because his predecessor was and remains, within his new portfolio of Education and Science, a politician of vision. I have often felt that because of the clientist nature of our political system we have not appreciated those who have shown vision. There are many politicians across the political spectrum with whom one might not necessarily agree but whom one cannot but admire for the deep thought they bring to the parliamentary process. On the Fine Gael side, there was the late John Kelly and, currently, Deputy John Bruton in his various roles and, on the Government side, without casting any reflection on anybody else in the context of local government reform, the current Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey and Deputy Cullen, Minister for the Environment and Local Government.

That is the good news. The bad news is that I stand here as a loser, having lost the argument. Like my colleague, Senator Wilson, I will vote reluctantly for this legislation. I will do so because, the argument having raged within my political party for the past four years, the majority view prevailed. That is the democratic process. My main reason for opposing it was narrowly focused. It was because I was elected to this House by county councillors and, therefore, had a rather unique relationship with them and local authorities in general. I felt we should have been treated separately but, unfortunately, no Minister can do this constitutionally. The two representative Houses cannot be separated. What goes for one goes for the other in legislative terms.

I share the opinion of Senator John Paul Phelan that Oireachtas Members enhance rather than diminish local authority business by their presence. Perhaps the Minister will clarify something on which we have corresponded, which is not contained within the legislation but is, I presume, part of the regulatory process he will initiate once the Bill is passed. I refer to Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas and appointed members of statutory bodies and sub-committees of local authorities, for example, the vocational education committees, library committees and SPCs, in which they play a very valuable role. I am the only Oireachtas Member on Leitrim Vocational Education Committee. I am an appointed member and value my presence on the committee. In a political sense, my colleagues on all sides of the House see my involvement in education matters as essential, because it links the local county committee and the national Parliament which means that on any national policy or impending national policy they get the inside track, given that many initiatives and policy areas are discussed here before they reach local authority level.