Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is the same role. Dare I say it, we can always look for the negative. The role was designed and put to the people. There is a similar role and relationship between a Secretary General of a Department, who is the Accounting Officer, and the Minister. It is virtually identical. This is a significant shifting of powers from the CEO, who will now be called the director general, to the mayor. This reflects the normal functioning of a Department. We would expect people to work in co-operation. It should be remembered that this is a seismic change whereby the mayor now brings the €600 million budget to the floor of the chamber. The mayor brings the development plans to the chamber. All the DACs, in the context of 2030, will report directly to the mayor. Once again, there have to be practicalities, and one of the practicalities was that staff would continue, as they do in Departments, to be under the domain of the director general.

I am quite content with the legislation. It is new territory. I have studied at length the local authorities worldwide. There are ones that have worked but there is no perfect directly elected mayor situation. We have come up with something here that followed from a plebiscite. Limerick people voted for it. We set up an implementation group under the direction of Tim O'Connor, an excellent chair, and it came forward with proposals. Among those proposals was one that there should be a speaker and deputy speaker of the house rather than the mayor chairing the committee. That is not the situation in New York. The structures are tried and trusted in terms of Departments. I am of the view that this will work very well. The mayor will have his or her own special adviser and dedicated staff within the office for his or her role. Once again, this will work only if there is co-operation, and that is a human aspect. The legislation has been very much framed in a positive way and will work in a very structured fashion. Ultimately, for the first time ever, there will be a mayor with a mandate from the people, which is a very strong endorsement of the role. Anyone working within a local authority will be minded of that.