Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Boyhan and the members of the group for tabling this motion. The debate is ongoing. The Council of Europe's report is stark warning of where we are, but we did not need that report to tell that local democracy is under threat in Ireland. In such a situation, democracy itself is under threat because we all see that fewer people are putting themselves forward, powers are being stripped away and, as the report from the Council of Europe said, we have a most centralised form of local government. As colleagues said, we have to make a decision about whether we want local democracy or administrative areas. At this moment, we have administrative areas where elections are held every five years but all the power rests with people who are not elected. The motion talks about the issue of JPCs being the next situation. In the current proposal, someone who is not elected will become the chair of JPCs or their new version.As colleagues are aware, Senator Boyhan is on the public consultation committee. The Chair is rapporteur for the report on the future of local democracy in Ireland which is looking not just at the problems but also at the solutions and what we need to do to roll back what has happened over the past 30 years.

Democracy is an experiment that is three generations old in this country. Ireland is one of fewer than ten countries to have been a continuous democracy for the past 100 years. The fact that people are not willing to put themselves forward for election will undermine this House and the Dáil in years to come because, as we know and as the Minister is aware, many Members of the Dáil start their political careers in local government. If people will not put themselves forward for local democracy, what will we do about our national Parliament in ten years' time? That is how serious the situation is. We need a rebalancing of powers and functions. As a Seanad, we are looking at that and will have further public consultations next year.

We need not just to identify the problems but also to recommend solutions and see what powers need to be rolled back, not just in theory. We need to ask the parliamentary drafts office to write the legislation. It is to be hoped that such legislation would be supported by all Members of the House. Following the public consultation committee, I hope political parties adopt the recommendations of Senator Cassells's report, supported by everybody, on the next general election. I hope the legislation proposed by the Seanad public consultation committee would be taken on board by everyone and we would reverse the trend. The direction of travel is wrong. Next week, we will see another step in the wrong direction.

The evaluation report for joint policing committees is with the officials, yet it has not been made available to the democratically elected Members of this House or the other House. If we are going to do a pilot, we should allow people to see what the evaluation looks like and then have a discussion. Senator Mary Fitzpatrick outlined previous discussions on pilots in her area, which did not work. Yet, that is what we are rolling out. We will have unelected people chairing those committees. Does anyone think that looks like progress in terms of transparency and democratic accountability in this country? It does not work.

Doing the same thing over and over again will simply repeat the failures of the past. More concerning for all of us is that fewer people would put themselves forward for election which would undermine democracy and transparency in this country. I thank Senator Boyhan for putting forward the motion. We will have an interesting week next week.