David Norris (Independent)

To some extent I understand the Minister's reluctance to include too many people because boards and groups that expand too far can become unwieldy, which is inimical to democracy. However, in this case, only one person will represent the area. With regard to the strategic plan, in the 18th century there were regular rows between the citizens of Dublin and the University of Dublin, Trinity College — a kind of classical town and gown harangue or malaise went on. I am not suggesting anything quite as vigorous will happen in this regard but one wants the best possible relationship between local residents and a major, spectacular development such as this — it is an extremely positive development which we all welcomed on Second Stage. We do not want tension between this institution and the people representing surrounding areas.

As Senator Ulick Burke noted, this is important in terms of communications. It is also important because we all hope this development will be a splendid one, which will have a kind of integral development into the local community, which will have access to its various services. The site will have a large area of open parkland which, presumably, will be very pleasant for recreation, swimming pools may be developed as part of the apparatus on campus, and lecture theatres may be made available to the community. The intention is to make the best use of these facilities so the people of the neighbourhood know of them, have some input into the plan which will develop them and, I hope, use them. Therefore, it would be useful to have a representative of local residents so there will be, as Senator Burke stated, positive communication and a positive input in terms of development.

It would also avoid problems further down the line. As a fictitious example, should U2 favour the institute with a concert to raise funds for its new science laboratory or something like that, this might be agreed with the local residents if they were part of the decision-making process. However, if the idea was suddenly landed on them, all the ould biddies would be out banging bin lids or phoning their councillors to complain, "Oh, I couldn't sleep with the noise", and so on. That would be obviated at no great cost because the addition of one person would not overbalance matters in the context of a group of this size.

The Minister should not rule this out absolutely. While she is obviously not in the mood to be very yielding on the matter today, she might be prepared to reconsider it sympathetically so an amendment could be put down on Report Stage.