Feargal Quinn (Independent)

He is very good. Dublin City Corporation alone has 6,000 employees, half of whom are administrative, that is, they do not work in the fire services or the libraries and nor are they street cleaners. Red tape under this bureaucracy can also be bad for business. With local government reform I would like to see, like many others, the planning process streamlined. The process of making an application for planning permission where a business may have to deal with any number of the 88 local planning authorities is inefficient, as is the system of appeals. We simply do not need this layer of bureaucracy for such a small population in such a small area. In addition, the original report by the Local Government Efficiency Review Group recommended that social housing rents due to local authorities should be deducted from social welfare payments in order to reduce the overheads required to collect rent and to reduce arrears. The report also proposed that the online motor tax system - a topic I have raised previously - should be expanded to allow owners of commercial vehicles to pay online and a handling fee of, say, €10 could be introduced to encourage online motor tax applications among other easy to implement measures. Why are these not being pursued as these inefficiencies could be removed with the stroke of a pen? Will the Minister of State explain what she is doing in this area?

The Revenue Commissioners collect income tax, the universal service charge, capital gains tax and corporation tax. Local authorities meanwhile collect commercial rates, business improvement tax, district taxes, levies and the non-principal residential tax. An Post, of which I have some experience, collects the television licence fee and the dog licence fee. The latter used to be seven schillings and sixpence; I do not know what it is now but I am surprised it is still in place. The Private Residential Tenancy Board collects the residential landlord tax, not to mention new taxes such as the water charge or the septic tank charge. The various tax collection systems seem to be highly inefficient.

For example, in France rates are collected with the electricity bills. In addition, people who do not have television sets must opt out of rather than opt into the licensing system, and I know we are changing the system here. The French system seems to be much more efficient. We should have a look at how they handle it there. I have a daughter living in France and she impresses me with their systems that seem to work so well.

This matter needs much more discussion. As I also mentioned, we need to tackle the hundreds of millions in revenue lost to this country through fuel smuggling. We could stop that by forcing commercial users to get refunds, perhaps applying online. There is great potential there. A reform of local government would hopefully get people to engage more with politics. We should also examine the citizens' initiative mechanism that is in place in Switzerland. It is a very interesting one. It allows voters to directly change the Constitution or to veto legislation. Thus, there is more and much greater involvement and engagement with voters. In analysing local government and the overall lack of engagement with politics, such a structure would at least foster much more interest in the political system and that would be very useful and healthy. Last year, almost 1,000 Belgian citizens were brought together to discuss the future for their country. Why can we not do something similar here as a starting point? The constitutional convention might be a way to do that.

We can make structures more efficient quite easily. There are many concentre examples for the reform of local government that merit discussion. For instance, in England, Suffolk County Council is in the process of cutting its workforce from 27,000 to just a few hundred staff. It is attempting not to cut services, but rather it plans to get the private sector and social enterprises to take over the vast majority of those services. The council said that it "had a [sterling] £100 million overspend by the end of the ten year contract period with BT [British Telecom]". Similar inefficiencies are reported here every day and we must try to take similar steps here. It was reported earlier this year that Sligo Borough Council is continuing to pay a bullying expert almost €1,000 a meeting to monitor the behaviour of councillors. It is paying that expert €1,000 a meeting despite finding no evidence of bullying in the past two years. A human resource consultant is to be paid €19,000 this year for sitting in and taking notes on the conduct of those attending the council meetings. I note the Ceann Comhairle is indicating that I have spoken long enough. This will bring to €54,000 the amount the council will have spent on having a private human resources consultant observe and report on all its meetings. This is absurd. Other councils in the UK are also transforming the service delivery side of the councils, from housing to benefits, into an arm's length commercial style business with at least just 14 staff. There is an awful lot we can do. The steps the Minister of State is taking are in the right direction. I congratulate her on that and support them but we can do an awful lot more. The challenge is there for us to do it and that challenge is open to be taken now.