Members of Cork City Council have unanimously accepted the findings of the local government review which recommends the retention of their council and the first city boundary extension in half a century.

THE idea of smaller, leaner government has long appealed to people of a certain disposition even if the Reagan/Thatcher years, the high water mark of that philosophy, are hardly a ringing endorsement; their legacy is not as empowering and freeing as they and their supporters imagined it might be.