Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

We discussed this issue at length on Second Stage and Committee Stage. This law works extremely well. Only four local authorities have been removed in more than half a century. This is great credit to the local authority system. The last removal was Naas UDC in 1985, almost 20 years ago. Prior to that one would have to go back to 1969, when the members of Dublin Corporation were removed. The law works extremely well and it would be foolish to tamper with something which has been well tried, well tested, well understood and well implemented.