Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

Some areas may have very active chambers of commerce with business improvement district arrangements in place but that may not be the case in other areas. I do not want to mention a town in case it has an active chamber of commerce but councils in some areas do not have developed infrastructure of that kind. I want to put guidelines in place that offer a menu of choices, thereby allowing people to make a decision which is best suited to their own particular needs.

Senator Walsh said this was the first level of accountability and in a sense that is true but I wish to emphasise a point I made when the Bill was on Committee Stage in this House. The intention is not that the local authority members will be able to lecture the gardaí. Local authorities have a duty, and they now have a solemn duty under this Act, to get their own acts together. The gardaí now have a forum in which they ask the local authority what it is doing about the state of a block of flats, for example, or the inadequate provision of an indoor football pitch for the youth in the area.