Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and acknowledge his kind words to Maebh Doyle. I would like the Minister for local government and heritage to make a statement regarding the plans for a directly elected mayor for Cork city and county. I am trying to start a debate about where we are with local government and what the national plan will be. On 7 June, a few days from now, Limerick will go to the polls to choose a directly elected mayor, which will be a unique statement for democracy in Ireland in so many ways. He or she will have a new function, a new office, new powers and a budget, and it will in many ways change how Limerick is going to be promoted and looked on. As positive as that is for Limerick, I want to know what the Government's plan is for directly elected mayors elsewhere in the country and whether Limerick is going to be an outlier whereby it will have a directly elected mayor but we are not going to do anything in the other local authority areas, whether in Wexford, Cork or wherever. Where is our national policy for directly elected mayors and how are we going to look at the issue going forward? Is Limerick going to be a template or is it just an experiment?

I am fundamentally of the view that what happened five years ago in the context of Cork was a total mistake. We should have one local authority in Cork, and if geographically between 12.5% and 13% of the nation were covered by one local authority, with a population heading towards 600,000 people, that would give it a unique power in the context of calls for funding, looking for international investment and how we would be looked at nationally or even internationally. We are behind the curve among regions in Ireland. Limerick now has the potential to move ahead, which is great for Limerick, but from a national point of view, we need to have a policy that will be appropriate to regions throughout Ireland, whether Galway, Limerick, Wexford or elsewhere, and I do not know whether that national policy is there at the moment. I acknowledge that we are coming to the end of a local government cycle and that nothing will be done in the next few weeks, but for the next five years, a plan needs to be put in place for our vision for local government, where we are going to go with the idea of directly elected mayors and what we are going to propose for regions.

I fundamentally believe that what happened in Cork was wrong. I read in the newspapers that there was fighting over the compensation package that was agreed in respect of the most recent boundary extension. A sum of €13 million has to go from Cork city to Cork county, and the city is now saying it cannot afford to pay it. This is daft. It makes no sense at all. That is going to do nothing for the Cork region. When I go to Páirc Uí Chaoimh to support Cork, I do not support the city player over the county player; I support Cork. I just do not understand how we have got caught in this unfortunate dilemma that does not see a suitable structure to promote Cork county or city appropriately in local government. My focus for the next five years is on what the strategy will be and how we are going to fix this issue to make sure that the Limerick dynamic can be looked at as a template to move forward in order that we can have it in all our major cities and regions such that they will all be on a level playing field. At the moment, Limerick is at least five years ahead of us, and having a directly elected mayor will give Limerick the potential to have an extra voice when it comes to attracting investment.

The real question for the Government, although it may be one more for the next Government than for this one, relates to how we are going to have a coherent local government policy that will promote the regions that need to be promoted and be a counterbalance to Dublin. What is the Department's view? Where is it going to go and how will it bring forward a new plan to make sure local government is what it says on the tin, that is, government for local people on the ground?