Earlier this summer, Deputy O'Connell and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, supposedly had daggers drawn over the development of the Dublin metro. Later in the summer, I happened to be at a public meeting where the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, who is sitting behind him, had an upfront, full-scale public row on how we would develop St. Michael's Estate in Inchicore. I read that the Minister, Deputy Catherine Murphy, said that Cathal Brugha Barracks would be used as a potential site for public housing, with which I agree and for which this House voted, only to read on Sunday that the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, said they can go to Mullingar.

In terms of my question, I welcome that the people of Cork have been given a chance to vote for a directly elected mayor of their city. I would like to know the process for doing that, but why is the Minister leaving the people of Dublin out and leaving our city with chaotic leadership and no co-ordination of transport, housing, planning and development? He is here saying that Dublin City Council should be doing something on the vacant sites levy. Allow it to do it by allowing us to elect a mayor so that we can have leadership of our city rather than have Fine Gael internal rows everywhere and letting the city go into gridlock and a housing crisis, which is what the Minister is doing. Where is our mayor for Dublin?

Perhaps if Deputy Eamon Ryan's party had more than two Members, there would be more disagreements within his party group. I can assure him that when one has 70 public representatives, or whatever the number is now, there will always be a degree of disagreement among members, and as somebody who does not lead with an iron fist, I allow for it. Sometimes one has to allow for people to have differences of opinion within political parties, but the decisions we make will always be the ones that are in the best interests of all the people and not any section of the people or any particular constituency.

The Minister of State, Deputy John Paul Phelan, will bring forward proposals on directly elected mayors in this session. The rough idea at the moment is to hold plebiscites in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford to ask the people if they would like to have a directly elected mayor.

And Dublin.

Dublin is different. Dublin is complicated by the fact that we have four local authorities-----

No leadership.

-----and the proposal to have a fifth mayor - a sort of mayor of mayors, super mayor or chair of the mayors - is not one I believe would bring about better governance in the city of Dublin.

The Taoiseach spoke in favour of it when he was in opposition, as did the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy.

What we propose to do is something different, which is a citizens' assembly to ask the citizens of Dublin how best they would like to see the local government in Dublin reformed. I personally like the Paris and London model, which is a single authority with a small number of full-time assembly members, a powerful executive mayor and, below that, many local councils like boroughs that people would really identify with. I refer to places like Lucan, Blanchardstown, Castleknock, Dún Laoghaire or Dundrum-----

Balbriggan.

-----but maybe I am wrong. Let us ask the people of Dublin, not just the politicians.