Report on merging Cork councils due out within weeks

The minister for local government has said he hopes to get political consensus on a new report he intends publishing within weeks which will shape the future of local government arrangements in Cork for the next 50 years.

It was hoped that the Mackinnon review of the controversial Cork Local Government Review process, the so-called Smiddy report, which recommended a merger of Cork city and county councils, would be ready by now.

The key recommendation — to create a super-council — split the five-person committee three-to-two in favour of the merger, with UCC academics Prof Dermot Keogh and Dr Theresa Reidy publishing a minority report supporting an extension of Cork’s city boundary.