David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A helpful suggestion came from one of the local authority CEOs to whom I spoke. In any local authority area, there is investment in addition to funding for local government that comes from a myriad of Departments. The Department of Education and Skills, for example, will spend money as part of capital and current expenditure but local authorities are not informed automatically of what funding goes in. They might hear about it in local newspapers or announcements. Why can a process not be put in place so the CEOs in the councils can be directly informed of funding that comes from other State agencies? It would make sense. They could then plan and they would know what is happening in their areas, which is not the case if they are not informed. Could this be examined to improve communications? Very often, one of the arguments we hear is that there is a silo mentality.

The second criticism is that small amounts of money, such as €10,000 for this and €20,000 for that, are made available on a piecemeal basis. All these small sums could be made available as part of a bigger package. There is a sense that there is a culture of breaking up the funding to make many small announcements because it is great for Ministers to be able to make such announcements. Is this an issue that could be examined in light of how grants are administered, and the piecemeal way that grant aid to local authorities is provided?