John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I commend our colleagues on introducing this motion because it gives us the opportunity to address local government. As someone who was in 2009, at the age of 21, elected to Waterford City Council, now Waterford City and County Council, I agree with Senator Fitzpatrick that it is an absolute honour to be a local authority member and be elected by a local community. I would like to think I have plenty of experience given that I served for 11 years before my election to this House, having held the positions of mayor, chairman of the regional authority, SPC chair and so on. Therefore, I have a breadth of knowledge of the sector, as other Members do. My reason for saying this is not to be self-congratulatory or anything like that but to say I understand the work done by councillors across the country day in, day out. Right across the country, they do not receive due recognition from the public or the media for their role and the amount of work that goes into the job. The role of councillor has expanded given the expansion of the number of meetings and the amount of engagement required. It is not fully understood by most.

Reference is made to the planning Bill in the motion. I am a member of the joint Oireachtas committee, as is the Acting Chairman. The Acting Chairman will recall the councillor organisations – LAMA and AILG – appearing before the Oireachtas committee to debate the expansion of the development plan process to a ten-year one. The feedback given to us on the day, notwithstanding subsequent correspondence, was that the organisations were in favour of the ten-year period but with a very significant and substantial review process put in place after year five. I look forward to teasing this out with the Minister of State during the course of the planning review. A councillor elected for only five years must be allowed to have the meaningful ability to feed into the process. I see the benefit of a ten-year horizon and the zoning of an appropriate quantum of land to allow housing to be developed. This was debated in the context of the discussion.

There are a few other points in the motion and these have been addressed by other Senators. With regard to Part 8, I did not see the necessity to tinker. I have always found the Part 8 process to work quite well. We have, of course, examples of where developments were blocked by some councillors in certain parts of the country; however, by and large, delays are not attributed to the Part 8 process. This has to be reviewed.

With regard to the community safety partnerships, Waterford is one of the pilot areas. Therefore, I would like to believe I have some first-hand feedback. Admittedly, there are fewer councillors involved in the community safety partnerships but there are far more organisations partaking in the process, including the HSE, because it involves a whole-of-community approach. I can see it from all perspectives. I understand the Bill will not preclude councillors from chairing the joint policing committees. That is a welcome move because the position of chair is so important in driving the whole agenda of community safety partnerships. Having served on the joint police committees and seen the operation of community safety partnerships, I certainly believe we can fuse both and come up with a workable model that will benefit the communities we all serve. That is the most important point.

Considerable work was done on remuneration by the Minister of State’s predecessor, Deputy Peter Burke. That was welcome. We had movement on class K PRSI, which was also welcome, and we had the maternity element. I am aware that much work has been done by the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donnell, on security, but I do not believe the security element goes far enough for anyone, including Senators, TDs and councillors. If there is a security review by the crime prevention officer in an area and he or she recommends X, Y and Z, it should be paid for no matter whether one is a Minister, TD, Senator or councillor. That is my firm position on the matter.

Could the Minister of State comment on the gratuity in his remarks? It was always the case that this was one fifth of the representational payment. Since the representational payment was increased because of the changes made by the former Minister of State, Deputy Burke, I understand that the direct link has not been reflected in the new rate. That is an anomaly that has to be addressed urgently.