Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for returning to the House for the resumption of our discussion on councillors' pay and conditions. I acknowledge his own involvement in local government over many years and his personal commitment to the role of councillors. I will not be saying many good things about the changes we are seeing but the best thing about them is the attempt to achieve parity between municipal district members and other local authority members. I was the only Senator who raised that particular issue when this subject was last discussed six months ago. It was unfair that municipal district members should receive an additional €1,000 while councillors in the four local authorities in Dublin and in the cities of Cork and Galway would not. We will at least now have parity between the different types of local public representatives on that particular matter.