Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

These are essential things, heritage sites and all of the rest, but there is nothing in there around that. What we are seeing is a backward step whereby it might become harder. We know that under this Government's watch a very stupid mistake was nearly made whereby all of the rights of way by use would have expired. Now we are seeing a kind of chipping away whereby some of the public rights of way that do exist might disappear and it becomes harder to have them. These are small but significant issues. We do not have time to go into the rest of them in this regard but in all of this, there is an underlying failure of democracy. We are seeing the erosion of local government's say in terms of local development plans. Let us be really clear, and it should be really clear when people leave this House and go to councillors around the country that the decision has been made to give more power to the chief executive and less accountability for the chief executive to local authority members. All of these are things that, bit by bit, damage not just the powers of local authority members but also damage local democracy. Crucially, they damage the faith of the public in local democracy when they see that they will have less say. They also damage, of course, the faith of those minority communities, including persons with disabilities and Travellers, who look to the national planning framework and the local development plans and do not see themselves named or identified.