Local Government (Support for Elected Members) Bill 2024: Second Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel I acknowledge the presence of Councillor Joe Malone, who does Trojan work and advocacy for local councillors. It is a well established fact that local authorities in Ireland are ineffectual. The Irish State is one of the most centralised democracies in Europe. City and county councils have not been given powers to address the issues facing their communities, much less the funding to deliver what is needed. We only have to look at the thousands of residents living in the flat complexes and people living in the inner city to recognise how local government has failed. In 2008, Phil Hogan announced the Local Government Fund allocation in budget 2009 of €1.6 billion to local authorities. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-10