Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach for selecting this Commencement matter and welcome the Minister of State. The Commencement matter is about municipal bonds and the important issue of financing local government. I was spurred on to table the matter by an inquiry from Councillor Karey McHugh Farag, on Galway County Council, who is doing a master's degree on the issue of bonds and the importance of funding to local government.

The Minister of State knows and I know, as I think all politicians in these Houses know, that local government is experiencing significant difficulties and challenges with the provision of ongoing funding. My focus is on how we might in some way leverage some mechanism of bonds. There are similar operations in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. I am familiar to a lesser extent with the position in Britain but am very conscious of what is happening in Denmark and Belgium. There are other imaginative mechanisms and innovative ways of leveraging money for essential infrastructure projects. We have to learn about best practice. There has to be alternative infrastructure financing that we can use in respect of strategies in developing long-term infrastructural development that communities and local government need.

I wish to focus on three issues today. How can we look at the need for new funding sources to generate resources for infrastructure projects? How can we look at new financing mechanisms that offer flexibility but also the potential for cost-effective ways of financing critical infrastructure across the country? How can we look at new financial arrangements and synergies that involve the private sector and that partner with the private sector, the non-profit sector and the public sector? They can all participate and ultimately have some benefit in these critical infrastructure projects. That is the key. We all want to deliver critical infrastructure, and there are a number of key issues when we look at this. We need to help to fund new development. We need to match payments with benefits in some way. If people put something into this, they need to have some benefit. It is very important that this is a mechanism whereby we can raise funding. This is critical and does not require voter approval. It should be remembered that the electorate votes people into office to get on with the job. We should not apologise in that regard. People are put into power and into office to get on with the job. We know the importance of critical infrastructure. Yes, there are weaknesses in the system in terms of administration. I do not want to overburden local government administration with the administration of additional mechanisms, particularly in the area of finance and funding, but there is enormous potential if we develop imaginative and constructive ways of looking at infrastructural funding.

In summary, like many elements of local government, these elements are challenging, but we need innovation, we need infrastructure and we need finance. That has to be at the very heart of new projects if we are to succeed. There is no doubt but that there is ambition in local government and on the part of central government, although perhaps not enough. If I have any criticism of central government, it is that it lacks real commitment to devolving real powers back to communities. We talk about mayors and reform of local government, but nowhere do I see a real commitment centrally, in central government, to devolve powers. When powers are devolved to somebody else, be it local government or whatever else, that must come with finance. The core issue I would like the Minister of State to look at today and maybe undertake to look at further with his officials in the Department is how we can leverage finance and bonds to facilitate the roll-out of our ambition, which is critical infrastructure and the engine to get the economy and communities going.