Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 April 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I echo many of those comments. The counties of Meath, Kildare and Wicklow have a greater combined population than the whole county of Cork. That is not appreciated. The model for distributing resources dates back to four censuses ago and does not factor in more recent ones. We were told on the day that questions could not be answered because the Minister was imminently going to make an announcement about a rebalancing and a more transparent approach to how local government funding would be allocated, but there has been no announcement. Obviously, this is a critical point.

The document relates to a number of issues and we should probably hold it over. For example, it has useful information on Irish Water and the 2015-21 business plan.

As we cannot interrogate Irish Water directly, we must have time to consider the information we have been given.

On the funding allocation to local authorities for unfinished estates, some of that money was to be recouped once the ghost estates were finished and sold and so on.