The majority position the Government parties have in two thirds of all councils seems to make them reluctant to tackle Local Government reform says the Green Party.

Minister Jan O'Sullivan says that the Government will examine the planning issues in the six counties that Minister Gormley selected for external enquiry and then decide whether they merit further investigation. However, those examples are only the tip of the problem and were picked as a sample of a wider systemic problem. They were selected on the basis that the lessons learnt in one county could be applied elsewhere, where similar circumstances exist.

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Green Party Planning spokesperson Tom Kivlehan said: "If the Government thinks the case in any county is spurious they can go to any number of other counties to find other examples of questionable practice. Rather than downplaying the scale of the problem and scoring political points, by questioning the process Minister Gormley established, they need to raise the lid on the malpractice that became common place.

"It beggars belief that the Government responded to the Mahon tribunal report by trying to deny the scale of the problem that exists. The only explanation we can arrive at is that the majority position that Fine Gael and Labour hold on two thirds of our councils is driving them to defend a system that suits their own internal purposes."

(CD/GK)