Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Huge changes have taken place in the role of the councillor. In my time it was part-time but now I do not know if a councillor's job is full-time, part-time or something else. In any event, it takes considerable time. To put this in context, somebody who is self-employed must more than likely employ somebody to do work every week, whether on a part-time basis like a day or half a day a week, and that would have consequences for business people. If these people are members of the local authority for five or ten years, they might have to pay redundancy at the end. Before the recession, a stipulation of two weeks of pay for every year of redundancy was used, with the Government paying 80% of the cost of the redundancy. Now the employer must pay the full cost of the redundancy. Somebody could be in the local authority for ten or 20 years employing a person part-time over that period and he or she could have to pay huge redundancy while getting a very small salary. This is important and should be taken into account in the review.