When State agencies fail to listen to local county and city councillors on the ground, the consequences are invariably negative. There is a growing frustration among councillors. They sit through lengthy local area or county development plan meetings only for the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR, to overrule them and to decide with a stroke of a pen that it knows better. For example, when I was a county councillor in 2024, we tried to zone lands for sports facilities in Loughrea. However, we were overruled, and it has caused a lack of sustainability in Loughrea. For example, in the past few weeks, Loughrea Rams' under 12 soccer team have had to make 40 km round trips for home games in Athenry. Our secondary school's rugby team has to make 126 km round trips to Creggs to play rugby. Some Gaelic football matches have had to be forfeited because of a complete lack of pitches.

If the OPR had listened, Loughrea's sporting carbon footprint would be 5% of what it currently is. This shows the ramifications of not listening to local councillors on the ground. My ask today is that we speedily support the local government taskforce and rapidly give power back to local communities who elected their local councillors and put trust in them, instead of allowing the OPR to overrule every decision councillors make. I implore that we get that moving with speed.