Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not talking about the development plan. I am talking about the relationship between councillors and the executive. I am saying the executive is not always a kind of meek servant of the council. Quite the reverse is the case in that it can have its own agenda items. Senator Fitzpatrick knows as well as I do that, to some extent, one has to play ball. There has to be a bit of possession football both ways in order for the game to work at all.

To go back to the basics, it is the case that we are being invited to change the law permanently to get rid of something that was considered in 2001 to be good, that is, the mandatory requirement for a public meeting. We are abolishing that and putting in place discretionary alternatives that really mean very little because, at present, there is nothing to stop the county chief executive of Waterford City and County Council from deciding to consult the people on anything he wants. Therefore, this is not a new power we are giving. We are removing an obligation and not conferring any new power. For that reason, Senator Boyhan's points are not negative. He is not over-egging the pudding; he is simply saying that this marks the end of mandatory public meetings, which the Houses of the Oireachtas voted for in 2001, presumably because they believed such meetings were an important component of dialogue rather than one-way street communication of information between local authorities and the people who live in their areas. There can be extremely expensive so-called consultation processes. I have seen that in respect of MetroLink. I am seeing it in respect of BusConnects in Dublin. A great deal of resources go into them. In the end, however, the dialogue that is supposed to take place at a public meeting is restricted because the people who are conducting the processes are not engaging in debate. They are showing people their proposals, asking what they think about them and saying that they will digest what has been said. They are not participating in a debate with people who may have an objection to what they are doing. It would be as if we landed a Bill into the House with an explanatory memorandum, everyone threw a speech into the middle of the arena and we called it a "debate". It would not be a debate. There would have to be backwards and forwards, a defence and proposals made for a debate to occur.

The mandatory public meeting was to facilitate debate in the real sense. It is a pity if it is being swept aside for no good reason under the pretext of the Covid emergency.