Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Quinn's suggestion that the new flyover at Newlands Cross would be named in honour of Veronica Guerin because that part of the motorway will always be associated with her and the heinous crime that was committed at that location. It remains live in the memory of anybody who drives up and down that road regularly, as I do. The suggestion is a very good one and I hope it will be carried forward.

It is wonderful to look forward to next week and the prospect of driving from the Red Cow roundabout to Limerick city or Cork without encountering a set of traffic lights. It shows the progress we have made. People often ask what the previous Fianna Fáil-led Government did with the boom but I tell them to look at the road from Dublin to Limerick or Dublin to Cork because that is part of the answer to the question. We talk about waste of money but that was an important piece of infrastructure to put in place and it will stand to us for a long time to come.

As part of the programme for better local government the Minister envisaged the setting up of public participation networks, PPNs, which is a support group for local authorities involving local community members. However, in the drafting of that schedule somebody decided that a person who had been an elected representative at any level of Government, either local or national, should not be chosen to represent a PPN in any role for one year after completing their term of office. I do not understand the warped thinking in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government that would come up with such a clause, which effectively debars somebody of experience in local government representing a PPN. We have stood down hundreds of councillors who retired voluntarily or whatever, particularly town councillors, many of whom had 20 or 30 years experience, and it is crazy to go to the trouble of inserting a clause to the effect that they cannot serve in a voluntary capacity to work with the local authority for one year. In effect that means a full five-year term because these people currently are being selected by public process, therefore, if one does not get on in year one, one will have to wait for five years to get the next bus, so to speak. We are debarring the services of people who together have more experience of local government than the rest of us. I ask the Minister to revisit that clause. It has already caused trouble in one or two local authorities where such people have been deselected because of what I regard as their eminent qualifications. I ask the Leader to bring that matter to the attention of the Minister.