Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. All of us who are former members of a local authority recognise the work done by councillors and the strategic importance of local government in our democratic system. Senator McDowell, in one of his recent contributions on the Order of Business, was critical of Dublin City Council both from a strategic planning perspective and for the way in which the council operates. We are all concerned to ensure we have good local government which delivers for citizens. The Minister of State has made an important step in that direction by increasing the pay and conditions of councillors. My own view, with which the Minister of State is familiar, is that public representatives at local authority level should be linked to a grade in the Civil Service and paid accordingly.

I am engaged in ongoing discourse with local authority members and I have a brother who is a councillor. One of the main concerns they have expressed to me is that under the proposed new regime, they will have less capacity for discretionary expenditure in their roles and, second, a lower remuneration than is currently the case. It is important to stress that these concerns are not about money per se. Politics, including at local government level, is about service to individuals and the community. What concerns me is that if we are in a race, which we were for a decade, of reducing pay and conditions for everybody, is what the outcome of that will be for the political system.I am not saying the Minister of State is doing this, but it a general concern. Will we have a situation as in other parts of the world where big money influences political decision making, where the campaigns of local politicians are paid for by business interests and the independence of public representatives is diminished? I do not want to go down the same road as the United States, in particular, where politics is the preserve of the few. Many of us, the Minister of State included, have come up in politics the hard way, via involvement in the local GAA sporting organisation and so on and operating with little or no money. We have worked hard to represent people and gain their trust sufficiently that they will give us their votes. That is how politics should continue to operate in this country.

We all recognise that the workload of local authority members has increased significantly. Senators Boyhan and McDowell may have a different view on this, but my view is that the municipal districts as they are currently constituted are much too large. In parts of west Cork, for example, the areas involved are vast.