James Bannon (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State spoke about funding. Local authorities imposed development charges before their most recent AGMs and in the run-up to their last finance meetings. Members of the Minister of State's party throughout the country are angry about the imposition of the development charges, which were intended as a means of making up for the shortfall in local authority funding. The Minister of State's party suffered the consequences at the local elections more than it did at the European elections. That has been stressed by members of Fianna Fáil to whom I have spoken in County Longford, where it lost three seats, and in several other counties.