Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment. I am rather intrigued by the Minister's explanation in regard to all of the amendments submitted on membership of the local community development committees. On one hand, he has robustly defended what he sees as the prior role of elected members over those who are not elected. He has talked about the fact that community groups will come to the council but that this will be in consultation. He disabused us of the notion that they would be in any way subservient, but at the same time, he made it clear that he was here defending the elected members. This is all fine and dandy. It is right and I agree with him.

However, why is it the Minister is leaving the provision so loose in regard to the membership of local development committees. In general, he refers to the committee including members, representatives, individuals and other such persons or bodies as may be provided for. I get the impression - correct me if I am wrong - that the Minister will issue, by regulation, the number of people who will serve on the committees, in other words, the total membership of the committees. There is nothing in the Bill to indicate whether there will be five, ten, 15 or 20 members on a committee, so I assume the Minister will make that decision by regulation.

If so, I assume he will also, by regulation, define the number of members in each of the various categories. In other words, he will say there will be three or four members of the local authority, X number of representatives of public authorities and X number of representatives. Otherwise, the system cannot work. There must be a starting point and we must know how many members the committee will have and this membership must then be divided out on a proportionate basis. That is the nub of the question. Who will be in the ascendancy? Will it be the non-elected members or the elected members?

The reason I raise this issue is that when the local development companies first started in the late 1990s, one of the major bugbears elected members had was that they found themselves in a situation where they sat on local development partnerships.

There would have been four representatives in the local partnerships. They found that because the funding was bypassing the local authority and going directly from the European Union or, in some cases, Dublin, an individual who had contested the previous local elections and had lost out to one or other of these four members was, as chairman of the committee or partnership, in a much more powerful and influential position because he or she had money to dish out. It was a great source of annoyance and frustration to elected members who found themselves competing, as it were, with non-elected members. I raise this matter because I wonder if the balance will now tilt towards the elected members.

I am not in any way trying to take away from the enormously important work done by community groups. It is vitally important that the membership of local community development committees be as widely representative as possible of the communities in which they operate, even if that means that there is a substantial and significant number of non-elected members. The question is whether the Minister will try to achieve a balance or will there just be token representation by local authorities, with the overwhelming majority of those on the committees being non-elected members. That may lead back to the difficult situation in which the partnerships found themselves at the beginning. I am not expressing any criticism of the work the partnerships have done as they have evolved since 1997. They have done extraordinary work and continue to do so. I hope the Minister will ensure those who are now working with the local development companies will still have an important role to play.