John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is not much disagreement among Senators or from me. The Leader of the House probably put it best in his contribution which echoed what he said last night. These sections essentially provide for the biggest boundary change in the history of the State. As well as the transfer of assets and liabilities, there is the much more important transfer of 80,000 to 85,000 people who, crucially, will still be Cork people whether it is Cork city or county. This is a fantastic opportunity for a single local authority to imagine how Cork city should be for the next 50 years and have sufficient space for necessary expansion.

Senator Grace O'Sullivan spoke correctly of the need to ensure office space being constructed in the city centre is matched with housing space. While there are similar examples around the country, alongside the massive expansion in office space in Cork city, the docklands area, which is smack bang in the middle of the city, offers a unique opportunity to provide masses of new housing of all sorts, private and public. A mechanism is required. I will veer from the specific case of Cork because there are particular issues with all of the docklands and older industrial areas, including the Galway docks and the Waterford docks, which I live 100 m from. These areas all have unique and individual problems. It is often the case, certainly in Cork, that there are issues of contamination in parts of the site that can make wholesale redevelopment for housing purposes uneconomic. The Government has to devise some sort of scheme that will allow these important strategic sites to be developed in an economically viable manner for developers, albeit one that does not allow them to walk away with massive profits. This requires a different day's work but the imagination that the Leader spoke about for Cork is absolutely correct. In fairness most of the management and the councillors in Cork are excited at the prospect of being in charge of the full city rather than the two thirds for which they were previously responsible.

Senator Boyhan made a good point. The problem that I and my officials have is that there is a clash unique to our Department compared with other Departments. Senator Murnane O'Connor and others constantly ask me to give more powers to local government. We want local decision making but the representative organisations for councillors have been unable to specify the additional powers councillors should have. That is why we have Ms Sara Moorhead, SC, working on this issue. The desire to give more responsibility to councils and councillors means the control exercised by the Custom House is already looser than the control exercised by other Departments and agencies. Local government autonomy means local authorities are corporate entities, but we regularly circulate and give national direction.

With regard to the Land Development Agency, representatives of which will come to the House in early January, there will be the itinerary of land assets. Senator Boyhan is correct that many local authorities do not have a full handle on all the assets under their control. I find that it is often questions by councillors that can lead to investigations into sites over which the relevant council may have a claim but may not have full and proper title. Councillors in local communities tend to know where such sites are and may suggest, for example, locating a new library on one of them. These things can happen on an ad hocbasis. I will speak to the Minister about the need for a full asset management project in local government. In recent years, local government has moved in a positive direction on issues of vacancies, particularly on issues of dereliction. To the best of my knowledge, all councils now have thorough derelict site registers. Some are very active in pursuing sites, while others are less active because they are worried about the costs. I hope the Land Development Agency will be able to play a role in that respect. While it is not a direct matter for this Local Government Bill, legislation related to local government are introduced regularly. While we need to protect the right of councils to determine their own business, it would be proper business management to have a detailed analysis of asset management carried out.

I acknowledge Senator Craughwell's support for the provisions on Cork and I am happy to have it. I hope the Senator realises that variations of many of the changes proposed for Galway also applied in the case of Cork. All of the issues we are discussing with regard to Galway applied in Limerick and Waterford. I understand there are questions of timing and so on, but Galway is not a unique case.

On Senator Murnane O'Connor's comment, we have significantly increased the numbers of county councillors but there were reductions in numbers in many rural councils.