Dáil debates

Tuesday, 28 June 2022

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate

Local Authorities

11:40 pm

Photo of Ciarán CannonCiarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am here to address the very significant and gross underfunding of Galway County Council, which has been a factor in seriously diminishing the capacity of that local authority to be able to offer the service to people that it should seek to offer. This gross underfunding has been going on for many years and the history is quite complex, so I will not go into that. It is stark in terms of the figures presented to us right now, however, by the executive management team within Galway County Council.

Looking at the budget per capitaallocated last year to local authorities with a similar demographic and similar make-up in terms of their rural-urban divide and of a similar size, Longford had a budget per capita of €1,500; Waterford had a budget per capitaof €1,320; Tipperary had €1,200; Mayo, €1,250; and Kerry €1,200. Then we go to Galway, with a budget per capitaof €800. That significant underfunding is seriously impacting on the recruitment and retention of staff within that local authority. In 2008 there were 1,006 people employed by Galway County Council. Just last year, that figure had reduced to 804. We contrast that staff figure of 804 for Galway County Council with a figure of 1,800 for Tipperary, 1,240 for Kerry and 1,025 for Mayo. Both the public representatives, the members of the local authority and indeed the management team there tell me that in order to address that gross underfunding, we are looking at a shortfall of roughly €20 million.

Whenever this case is raised with the respective Ministers responsible for the funding of all of our local authorities, we are told we must wait for the outcome of an ongoing review of our local property taxation system to see how we can use the proceeds of that local property tax to bring about an equalisation of all of the funding that is made available to local authorities across the country, and that we will then move forward collectively following that review. Before that review is finalised and before we set about carrying out its recommendations, Galway County Council in order to be brought to a level footing with all of those local authorities needs to have that immediate injection of €20 million.

Right now, the funding shortfall is impacting seriously on its capacity to deliver services, for example in the area of planning. Planning enforcement is now virtually non-existent within Galway County Council. Indeed, dealing with the massive additional number of planning applications that have arisen over the last 12 months has been very difficult indeed. In the area of housing grants for older people, what should be a very straightforward process of assessment of those grant applications is now taking up to nine months because there simply are not enough people working in that section to be able to adequately assess the grant applications and make the necessary grants. Particularly in the area of housing, every local authority in the country has been rightly charged with delivering on a major local authority housing programme. Again, in this area Galway County Council simply does not have the engineering or administrative staff to even go close to delivering on its commitment for local authority housing delivery over the next five to ten years.

This needs to be addressed. It has been going on for far too long. The underfunding of €20 million needs to be looked at in the immediate future and not in the long term after some ongoing review.

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