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

I thank Senator Kelly for raising this matter. As the Senator is aware, general purpose grants from the Local Government Fund are the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government's contribution towards meeting the cost to local authorities of providing a reasonable level of services to their customers. However, it is a matter for each local authority to determine its own spending priorities, including on environmental functions in the context of the annual budgetary process, having regard to both locally identified needs and available resources. The elected members of a local authority have direct responsibility in law for all reserved functions of the authority, which includes adopting the annual budget, and are democratically accountable for all expenditure by the local authority.

In determining these grants, a number of factors are taken into account, including the overall funding available, the estimated cost to each authority of providing a reasonable level of services to their customers, the income each authority should generate from local sources and the necessity of providing each authority with a baseline allocation that supports its financial stability. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government also provides funding to local authorities for environmental purposes through the environment fund, and income to that fund derives from the proceeds of the environmental levy on the supply of plastic bags and on waste that goes to landfill. The purposes for which payments may be made from the environment fund are set out in the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001 and include a range of purposes for the protection of the environment. According to the most recently published environment fund accounts, which are for 2012, local authorities received approximately one third of total expenditure from the fund in that year - that is, €23.5 million of the €70.7 million that was spent by local authorities from the fund.

It is worth noting that the local government funding model will change considerably in 2014. Under the Finance (Local Property Tax) Act 2012, commencing this year, the Minister for Finance will pay into the local government fund an amount equivalent to the local property tax paid into the Central Fund during that year. This revenue will be allocated to local authorities from the fund. The local property tax will provide a more sustainable and resilient system of funding for local authorities and therefore a sounder financial footing for the provision of essential local services.

In respect of the staffing of local authorities, each city or county manager is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authorities for which he or she is responsible. Current recruitment and promotion in the public service is subject to a moratorium, which was introduced in March 2009 in response to the financial crisis. It is a matter for city and county managers, in the first instance, to ensure that the moratorium is implemented while appropriate service levels are maintained. Exceptions to the moratorium in local authorities require sanction from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and all staffing sanction requests are examined by that Department on a case-by-case basis, having due regard to the continued delivery of key services in the context of staffing and budgetary constraints. However, the Departments of Social Protection and the Environment, Community and Local Government are currently engaged in the implementation of a new labour activation initiative through local authorities, and the Minister, Deputy Hogan, expects that 3,000 places will be taken up in 2014 by participants through the offices of the Department of Social Protection for work to be done in each local authority. This is an opportunity for Roscommon County Council and all local authorities to prioritise this programme and to set out the work programme that can be done using this initiative.