Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
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Obviously it is important there is a quality of service and the performance indicators are a good way of doing that. I have been looking at the issue from a practical point of view. The delivery of service requires people. There is a very unequal distribution of local government staffing. I realise that issue cannot be rectified overnight. For example, Meath, which is a rapidly growing area, has half the staffing level that is available in Kerry, although Meath has 40,000 more people. It is not possible to deliver services without people. It will be a real challenge to service the municipal districts where the staffing is at skeletal level. There will have to be a relaxation of the embargo and a rebalancing of the local government fund to take account of that issue. That imbalance occurs mostly in the more highly populated areas or in the periphery of not only Dublin but in the periphery of Galway and Cork one will find the same scenarios. Clearly the distribution of the general purposes grant shows the areas positioned on a per capita basis on the lowest level are those that are in those particular locations. The staffing and funding elements cannot be ignored in the context of the outcomes sought. We cannot compare like with like around the country. There will have to be a minimum level of service that people can expect to get.

A more critical look will be taken at local authorities. Already, people are asking what they are getting? They see a direct relationship with payment of the local property tax. If they see that vastly better services are provided in one location over another and if the origin of the problem is that the staffing level is half that in an area that has a larger population they would have every reason to feel aggrieved. As the local government fund will continue to part of the funding mix there has got to be relook at how it is distributed.

I do not have any difficulty with an equalisation element but a number of issues are not taken into account in the needs the resources model. For example, population increases have been inadequately counted. For example, if a county has four swimming pools it has a need to fund four swimming pools. If it happens to have two swimming pools then it does not have to maintain four swimming pools, essentially, it must be funded on the basis of two as opposed to four, when in fact it needs four.

The section is meaningless unless other things come with it. I do not disagree that it is needed but if there are to be outcomes that will be visible to people, there has got to be a commitment to the other issues.