RPA must focus on Council powers: Parsley

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 1st Jun 2005

North Down Alliance Councillor Ian Parsley has called on the Review of Public Administration team to focus on clearly informing the public about its work and the options available for improving public administration in Northern Ireland.

The Holywood representative stated: "My main concern would be that the issue has not been properly communicated to the public. Few people I speak to are even clear about the current powers of local councils and regional 'quangos', and they're even less clear about what the various options for reforming of them really mean.

"I would agree with many of the Councillors across the parties in North Down that too much attention is being paid to the technicalities of boundary drawing, and not enough to the reality of local representatives' work.

"Further, not enough attention has been paid to politics at local community level. There is wide variation in how truly representative the current community sector is, but nor will communities be responsive to the imposition of representatives from above.

"In that context, I would welcome the focus paid to youth services in the current Review team's thinking. It is very important to have these functions placed with local representatives, as this will encourage more youth engagement with representative politics.

"My party believes that, once those arrangements are looked at thoroughly, we will require nearer 15 than 7 councils. But we should be clear that figure is not just plucked from the sky, it is arrived at through trying to ensure communities are fairly and responsibly represented."

ENDS