Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I accept the rationale in respect of amendment No. 90. As I said earlier, the balance in this is important. We do not want a situation, in an over-politicised sense, where a slim majority in a council could remove someone with a direct mandate from the people. That could happen in any sense. Looking at some other jurisdictions outside of Ireland, you also do not want a situation where mayors have been involved in corruption and have a level of political support on their local authority. We do not want a sizable minority being able to keep a corrupt mayor in office if we arrived at a situation like that. Hopefully we would not be in such a situation but other countries have been. We are creating a role where there is a concentration of power in the hands of one individual. The opportunities around that increase but the risks increase as well. I have a concern that 75% could be too high but I do not want that threshold to be particularly low either. That is what I am flagging with amendment No. 91.