Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second amendment No. 3. We have had a debate on amendment No. 4 and, like my colleague, I would like to know if the Minister, having reflected on the Committee Stage debate, has anything further to add. I do not want to reiterate the arguments that were put forward. The Minister is fully aware of them. I appreciate also that on Report Stage I have only one opportunity to speak so I hope I can use the full force of my rhetoric in a short few sentences rather than opening up the debate again. I would be very keen to hear what the Minister has to say about this.

I concede that I am probably coming from a perspective of being somewhat geographically parochial but it applies more acutely to Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim than to any other configuration across the country. From that point of view I am seriously concerned that, because of the population weighting and the geographical spread of the new configuration, my county and County Sligo will both lose out as has happened with every other regional organisation that I have been involved with, been aware of or have noticed in my part of the country. Going way back to the regional tourism organisations, where there is a dominant county, it sucks in everything. It is not something people set out to do or which is laid out in policy but it inevitably happens that the larger county will take over in terms of personnel, policy and a whole range of other things. That is where my main concern lies. I appreciate that the Minister cannot legislate just for Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim but he has already used his considerable intellectual powers and capacity to ensure a level playing pitch in other areas of this legislation, particularly regarding the representation at local authority level so I hope he will be able to do a Solomon-like judgment in relation to this.