Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I will touch on just a few points. With regard to section 51(1), which I believe was section 48 in the original Bill before being amended in the Dáil, I pay tribute to the Minister of State and the Department. I wrote to the Department and to the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, on this matter. It was initially proposed that local authority members would have to give every possible assistance to the Land Development Agency, which was deeply inappropriate. I note that the Government put down an amendment in the Dáil in this regard, which was a welcome reaction to the objections of many councillors around the country. In my own area of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Councillor Jim Gildea has done an enormous amount of work during the term of this council and the last council to promote the development of the lands at Shanganagh in the Shankill area to provide for a whole range of different housing models. He has been in touch with me about this, as have other councillors in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. I very much welcome the reaction to the representations made on that issue. I welcome the change to what is now section 51.

I agree with those other Members who have talked about the general reduction in the powers of local authority members. That is regrettable. It has not only arisen under this Government or the last Government but goes back to the passing of planning and development legislation in 2000. We have successively stripped away powers from councillors, the people who make decisions that are informed at a local level. The executive of the council is never going to knock on a constituent's door to ask what he or she thinks about something but councillors do that all the time. There is a failure to recognise the important value they bring to the process and the role that they have. In that regard, I have misgivings about section 58, which deals with section 183 of the Local Government Act 2001. I heard what Senator Cummins said about this earlier and Senator Currie has just raised the same issue. I wonder about the wisdom of stripping from councillors the power to decide on the disposal of land. However, I also recognise, as I said earlier, that this has now been limited. I accept the work the Minister of State has done with Senator Cummins to address that issue and to make the proposition more reasonable.