Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last week, I raised the issue of devolving or transferring more powers from central government to local government. That is a theme I want to revisit today. The Dublin Citizens’ Assembly voted overwhelmingly in its recommendation - and it is a recommendation - that all four Dublin authorities, namely, Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, South Dublin County Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council should be retained. That was important to note in the context of the debate I was seeking last week. Also, the assembly proposed that a plebiscite on the option - and the keyword here is “option” - of a directly elected mayor for Dublin should be put to the people. It is clear that this is not a top-down situation. It is the people of Dublin city and county who will decide on that. I look forward to that report.

I want to thank the members of the assembly for their work, but I particularly want to take this opportunity to thank the 12 city and county councillors from all parties and none who collaborated strongly and robustly and who made a good case for local government and the four local authorities. They advocated for the enormous work they do. That was great collaboration. I have heard favourable reports in respect of it.

Of course, there is a larger debate to be had about what the assembly discussed. We will hopefully have another opportunity to look at that some time. It wants to see greater powers in housing, homelessness, community, healthcare, transport, the environment and a whole range of other areas. It referred to a ten-year period. In that context, the debate on this matter will be long. At some point, the chairman of the assembly will submit a report to the Oireachtas. Hopefully, we could tee up a focused debate on that within the House.

I welcome that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, published an action plan to reform An Bord Pleanála earlier today. The plan is impressive and was approved by the Government this morning. It is in now in circulation. Key to the entire thing is that there are 24 actions. There has been much debate among Senators on all sides regarding An Bord Pleanála.We rightly had to hold back until we saw firm concrete recommendations. Today, the Government approved a report. The 24 actions listed in the report should be the basis of some form of debate within this House. It is positive and timely. I thank the Minister and his officials for expediting that. It came to this stage quite quickly. It would be helpful if we had a debate in the House on that report, if possible.