Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)

Like me, Senator Ormonde was at the LAMA conference in Listowel. I shared the top table with Senator Cummins. Like my colleagues on the other side of the House I agree with the sentiments, but the Government has a view that the Bill should be part of a widespread and comprehensive reform of local government which I am sure will involve the inclusion of LAMA as a nominating body. One of the more disturbing parts of local government reform is currently taking place. While we were promised White Paper as part of the programme for Government, we have essentially local government reform by stealth.

The efficiency review implementation body was appointed in recent days by the Minister, Deputy Gormley. While we all agree that there must be efficiencies within all Departments, we will have reform of local government without having a debate on the 106 recommendations of the efficiency review report on local government, some of which are wide-ranging, including the merger of various offices within local authorities, including county managers. I can see a lot of sense in having shared facilities when it comes to payroll and other issues. If there is a payroll department in a city council like Limerick and a county council has a similar staffing arrangement, surely efficiencies could be found there.

When I look at the names of the people who are on the efficiency review implementation body, I note one of them is a former deputy chief executive of the HSE, Pat McLoughlin. If we are now looking for efficiencies in the HSE with the loss of 5,000 people, which is only coming this week, what was Pat McLoughlin doing when he was deputy chief executive and why was he not implementing those efficiencies in the HSE over recent years? He is now being asked to do a job which he was not able to do in an agency. There is also a former Secretary General of the Department of Finance and John O'Hagan, who is a professor of economics in Trinity College. We all know economists cannot agree on anything and that if one put all the economists in the world end to end, they would not come to a conclusion.