I move amendment No. 1:
In page 5, line 6, after "GOVERNMENT" to insert "AND TO ENABLE THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT TO EFFECT CERTAIN REFORMS".
What I seek to do in this amendment is to change the title of this Bill from "An Act to amend and extend the law relating to local government" and to add "and to enable the Minister for the Environment to effect certain reforms". It is significant that many of us have spent a very long time preparing amendments at short notice. We have gone through 27 of the 300 amendments tabled by Opposition parties on a Bill which, as I said earlier, will determine the structures for local government for years to come.
Many of us on this side of the House feel frustrated because clearly the Minister is not of a mind to accept amendments, no matter how well argued or logical they may be. He is determined to bulldoze through this House in the shortest possible time very comprehensive legislation that does not bring about local government reform or a devolution of powers to local authorities but brings to himself a whole range of new authorities and powers.
We have only begun to scratch the surface of this Bill in recent days and it has underscored very clearly that the fears we expressed from the very beginning, that the Bill was far from reforming legislation, are all true. I deeply regret that the Minister and the Government have refused to allow adequate time to Deputies on this side of the House and to his own backbenchers — if any of them have an interest in local government, but it does not seem they have from their attendance over the past few days — to bring some measure of reform into this Bill and to make it workable. I deeply regret also that Members on this side are clearly not going to make any changes because the Minister has the numbers and has a fixed mind on the issue. The only thing we can hope to do is to alert the general public to what exactly is in the Bill.
Unfortunately the efforts made by this side of the House got scant coverage in the media. The endless hours we have put in in recent days to try to reveal the damage being done by this Bill and to underscore the hidden agenda of the Bill have gone largley unreported. I regret that very much. We would get some satisfaction at least from being able to say we have done a good job if the people were alerted to the dangers inherent in this Bill because this Minister and the Government refused us the opportunity to make meaningful changes.
Before we continue with this sham — and it is increasingly clear that that is what it is — let me say the Government are not interested in this Bill. They have put together a measure largley to satisfy a promise they made to introduce local government reform prior to the local elections. At the hustings they can say they kept their promise in the hope that the public will not be alerted to the reality that not only have they not kept their promise, but they betrayed the trust of the people in relation to the many aspects of the reforms and the real devolution of powers promised.
Let us begin this Report Stage debate by addressing that reality. Let us begin by putting in a new Title, a definitive Title. It is not an Act to extend the law relating to local government; it is an Act to enable the Minister for the Environment to effect changes. The Bill gives him the powers to do a range of things by order, by regulation. The devolution of powers that he lauded widely at press conferences and during his Second Stage speech are a pretence and are seen to be shallow and hollow when he puts a range of obstacles in the face of the real devolution of power. The Minister has no intention of allowing one whit of control to escape the Custom House. That is patently clear.
The issue of funding, which we discussed at length, is not addressed in this Bill. I do not want to take up time because we have a lot of work to do, but we should start off on the basis of reality. Since we cannot achieve anything by way of change, let us underscore to the best of our ability the effects of the Bill to the people outside. Now that other issues are not detracting from this debate today, I hope this fundamental legislation — and few Bills are of more fundamental importance because we are putting in place the layer of democratic accountability for local government — will be seen to be a sham. Let us put that down in black and white for the world to see.