Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, who is a former Senator, back to Seanad Éireann. This is an important debate, as we all know. In the previous Seanad, we had a debate on the future of local democracy, and one of the many recommendations out of that was that there would be a task force established under the next programme for Government to look at all the issues facing local democracy. This related to service delivery, the work of the democratically elected local authority members, the powers that have been slowly but surely eroded and transferred to those who are unelected, the safety of local authority members, a concern we share with them at this stage, and making sure local democracy works for the citizens. I thank the Minister of State for coming here today. He is most welcome.