Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

Will the Leader arrange a debate on local government funding, which is an important matter? Estimates will soon be published by county and city councils. Councils are mandated to carry out a wide range of functions on a daily basis and they interface more often with the public than any other Government agency. Local government funding should be reviewed and debated because many people wonder whether local authorities are regulators or service providers. They increasingly regulate and this needs to be debated. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to the House for such a debate.

Reference is often made to waste management policy going forward. However, I would like a debate on the issue of legacy landfills, which are the old landfills that were operated by local authorities for many years and which remain untreated. It will cost millions of euro out of the capital budgets of city and county councils to deal with them. I would like to hear the views of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on how he proposes to deal with them because EU obligations must be observed in regard to these landfills, which should be registered. Some private legal landfills may not even be registered yet. Local authorities will face a significant demand on their capital budgets to address this issue. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on this.