Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The leadership of every party and those who have no party are responsible here. There must be a real willingness among the political establishment to take on the Civil Service and to demand a proper, functioning democracy and to insist that those who provide it are remunerated accordingly. That is not happening at the moment and until we come to that day, we can forget about providing a proper service to the citizen who deserves better. A councillor phoned me the week before Christmas last year and told me that he was not able to buy a turkey to feed his family. That is the situation that the Government and the Opposition are presiding over and it is unacceptable.

We must bring forward the commission immediately and have it report within eight weeks. Let us be imaginative and let us resource the councillors adequately through the provision of pay. Let us forget about all of the other allowances that SIPO and various other quangos are going to scrutinise anyway. Let us pay the people properly for an honest day's work. Let us provide them with a pension. They are going to get the contributory old age pension anyway so let us provide a local authority member's pension in line with the pension provided to local authority employees. Separately to that, let us provide them with proper administrative backup. There was talk here about agency staff but I am not sure if there is an agency in Mayo, Donegal or Sligo that could provide such a service to local councillors. We are trying to recreate the moon here for something that is very simple.

I know that the Minister of State is trying to do his best and I have the highest regard for him. He inherited this problem from former Deputy Phil Hogan, the then Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and is trying to fix it. I stand with him on that. I will help him and work with him in every possible way but we must get real. Otherwise, the foundation of Ireland's democracy is going to fall apart because no new young people are going to go forward at the next local elections.