Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The membership will increase to 41. Will the mayor have a vote to play? Will he or she have the same standing in votes as other members in the chamber? These are all matters where the devil will be in the detail.

The Minister of State spoke about a recall mechanism. It will have to be clearly defined and understood by the public. In my experience, unless members of the public understand how something will work in practice, in many cases, they will say "No" based on the principle of if in doubt, leave it out. That is an issue of great importance.

The idea of having strategic policy committees could be a good one. I was elected to the council when strategic policy committees were in their infancy in 2004. By and large, they did not work as they were seen as talking shops by many of their members, but they have evolved into something different and are now more substantive. If they are to be set up as sub-cabinet groups, they must have powers and must be able to feed into policy. The idea of having a programme for a council term is a very good one and it would work in practice. In addition, it is important that whatever the Minister of State is proposing be put to the people. The legislation is in place and the overarching aspect at which we are looking is the directly elected mayor.

The public is normally ahead of the politicians. It will ask how the Bill is going to work in practice and what exactly the mayor will do. It will certainly say "No" if it gets any whiff that it will be nothing more than a ceremonial role.

I am also conscious that there are 40 directly elected councillors on Limerick City and County Council and their powers must be protected and enhanced. That is key. How can we come up with such a system? The Minister of State spoke about reserved functions and stated planning functions would be retained within the executive. When it comes to housing, however, no one is infallible. To be honest, we have seen proposals for housing projects about which questions have to be asked about whoever thought about building them in a particular location. People have to be held accountable. We can state that in the political system we are very much held to account. It is very important, therefore, that we examine what works in other jurisdictions. Not so long ago we were part of a delegation to Germany where we studied the public banking system. In Heidelberg there is a directly elected mayor whose role is separate from that of the councillors, but he does attend meetings. There has to be accountability-----