Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Fair play to the Minister for steamrolling them. After 22 years as a town councillor, I never thought I would be in Leinster House singing the requiem for town councils. It is regrettable and very sad. Pining for town councils is in no way backward looking. They gave fantastic service and what I liked most about them - I was also a county councillor - was the manner in which the urban communities related to, associated with and were interested in the work of town councils. I can give one example of that, of which I am sure the Minister is aware. No election was of more interest to a town dweller than that for his or her own town council. Everybody wondered whether Mikey or Johnny got in and how many votes such and such got. I found there was no such interest or excitement about general, European or even county council elections. My supporters did not give two hoots what I got in county council elections once I topped the poll in town council elections and beat Fine Gael. That was the craic of it.

I have a few questions for the Minister to which I hope he might be able to come back. Before I leave the topic of town councils, I must mention that the best representative organisation in this country was the Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland which gave service over 100 years. I compliment it and recognise the fact that its president, Willie O'Callaghan, is here along with Mark Dalton who is also very involved. My questions are simple. Will the county council still be the premier, overarching local authority in the county? Will its position be in any way diminished by the creation of a new tier of municipals? If the answer is "No", what powers will a municipal authority or council have that the town council does not already have in the town areas?

There has been a Civil Service plot in respect of this going back years and the Minister inherited it. I think the former Minister for the environment, Noel Dempsey, was involved in that plot but he did not see it through. At least the Minister is seeing it through. The Civil Service had this up its sleeve for a long time. When I was first elected, I was elected to an urban district council. Do Members remember those? For no apparent reason, the Civil Service changed the names of them to town councils. This in a way diminished them and did what the Minister says he is trying to get rid of, namely, isolating the town and putting it inside town walls. Now we are going back to municipal district councils. Municipal and urban mean the same thing. There has been a little scheme going on for quite a while and I suspected it and said so at the time.

The Minister referred to the rating position in his speech. He spoke about the harmonisation of rates. Everybody knows that in most town councils, the rating is low. I was in business for a long time.