Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

That is hugely important. The other thing I worked on in my previous role was dedicated heritage teams. That is starting to roll out, whereby we have archivists, archaeologists, architectural conservation officers, ACOs, and heritage officers. Crucial to all of this, however, and this goes back to the comments other Members have made, is around the role of elected members and the responsibility. Sometimes, bad decisions which are pushed by the executive fall back on local authority members. As we have discussed previously, that element of participative planning and moving out of that token consultation really has to be fundamental to how local authorities work. It makes for better decision making, more inclusion and everybody feeling that their voices have been heard on the issue of the spending of public money. The experience I found. from talking to elected members as I was out on the Seanad campaign trail, was that they feel demoralised. The issue of pay has been mentioned but their workload is really so demanding right now. It is weekdays, weekends, holidays and it is non-stop. We need to look at the other elements of the Moorhead report that have not been grappled with, particularly with regard to that policy-making role and trying to ensure there is a better work-life balance for elected members.

It is important to acknowledge the incredible role that local authorities play in our daily lives, from our library services to our arts and heritage officers. All of that makes a really positive contribution to the daily lives of people that perhaps communities themselves do not realise. Local authority members should feel very proud of the role that they play on a daily basis in ensuring that grants go to local communities and should feel supported in the efforts they are making around community heritage initiatives.

Generally, I welcome the establishment of this task force. I urge the Minister of State to be brave and radical. We need to look at new funding mechanisms for local government and consider the establishment of energy supply companies. Could local authorities be involved in that? There has to be more devolution of revenue-raising powers to local government so that members can feel they have a hand and part in shaping the future of the communities they serve. Collectively we are all agreed here that our local government system is broken. It does fantastic work. Local authority members and staff do fantastic work but there is something fundamentally and deeply flawed when we continually look at taking away more powers, centralising power and having a clientelist system between the executive and councillors who are waiting for scraps from the table in order to make decisions that the executives want to push through. That has to be addressed. The elected members need to feel that their voices are heard, that they are representing their communities and that they have a work-life balance that makes them want to continue in local government. That needs to be at the core of what this task force looks at. Again, I know that the Minister of State has reform at the core of what he is trying to achieve and I urge him to be brave and courageous about it. If we continue the way we are going, we are just not going to attract good people to stand in local elections. That is the real challenge we have, right across the country. The political parties here know that it is very hard to find people because it is a very tough business to be in. There is an awful lot of online abuse and general abuse of local authority members.

We have all had that experience but for me, it was an enriching one in my political career. I was a councillor for 16 years and while I was the only Green in the village for a long time, I still found it to be a very enriching experience. It gives us a political grounding to enable us to come into this Chamber or into the Dáil Chamber to continue our political work on behalf of the communities we serve. I wish the Minister of State well. He has our full support for all of the efforts he has set out over the next number of years.