Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While the Minister of State is welcome, I am disappointed the Minister, Deputy Kelly, is not present to deal with this very important issue on the need for the Minister to provide immediate financial assistance to Sligo County Council to ensure that in agreeing a budget for 2015, it does not unfairly penalise the citizens of Sligo and-or its businesses and industrial community because of the council's adherence to the policy directed by the Minister's Department.

This night last week the Minister secretly met his party colleagues, and those of the Minister of State, from this House and the other House in connection with Sligo County Council. He threatened at that stage that he would abolish Sligo County Council if within a two-week period it did not get on top of its own finances. To do that at this stage would be like Jean-Claude Trichet and the people in the European Central Bank telling the people of Ireland that they will take the entire hit, and all of the pain, on behalf of the European bondholders.

It is wrong to treat Sligo County Council and other small local authorities in isolation because in effect they have performed in line with the directions of the Minister's Department in the context of targets set by it on performance with water services, the upgrading of wastewater treatment facilities and the targets laid down by the national spatial strategy, which was driven and supported by members of the Minister of State's party, members of the Labour Party, Independents, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and many vocational, civic and commercial groups. That policy was being driven by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and towns like Sligo were told to prepare for an infrastructure to facilitate a population of 100,000 people.

Against that backdrop, local authorities, especially those selected as gateway centres, were told to be more ambitious and seek to engage in public private partnerships to ensure enough land was bought in order that local authorities would not be subservient to the developers of the future in the context of having enough land for the people for social housing, leisure space, industry and so on.

Sligo County Council did that in the context of water, an issue much to the fore in recent days. The costs between 2008 and 2012 for wastewater treatment and water services in Sligo increased from €5 million to €10 million per annum. In the same period, central Government subvention to that local authority decreased from €18 million to €9 million.

The Minister of State can see, therefore, where the problem lies. When that infrastructure is handed over to the super-quango that is Irish Water, there will be no recompense for the people of Sligo. No funding has been made available to them to cover that outlay in which they engaged over that time. Much of the debt in question has come along from the acquisition of land and the investment in wastewater treatment and water services.

For the Minister to finger Sligo local authority, telling it to get its act together, with no help from the Department, or it will be abolished, is ridiculous in the extreme. The Minister’s own county council has issues. Donegal and many other local authorities have debt issues. To treat them as independent republics, telling them to sort out their problems without any centralised subvention is ridiculous in the extreme, particularly when the Minister knows there are local authorities in Dublin city, as well as other wealthy ones, which have tens of millions of euro on deposit. Fingal County Council, for example, which has Dublin Airport in one corner, has a rate base higher than Sligo and Leitrim county councils together. Fingal County Council has €100 million on deposit alone. This is fundamentally wrong.

Last week, the Minister travelled to meet officials in Sligo County Council in secret, without consulting any councillors or the cathaoirleach, to deliver the ultimatum to close its second tax office in Teach Laighne in Tubbercurry and lay off another 50 staff, even though 188 staff have been laid off over the past three years. It is a wonder the Government was not trumpeting the setting up of a task force on employment because so many staff have been let go by the local authority. He also told council officials that more commercial rates needed to be collected. The Government wants to shove it all onto struggling small businesses to pay this bill. This is ridiculous in the extreme.

Donegal County Council has five tax offices. Tipperary - the Minister’s county- has five municipal offices. To treat Sligo in this way is disgraceful. Smaller local authorities are providing services for citizens. Just because they are not in Fingal County Council, which is cash rich, does not mean they are not entitled to those services. Picking Sligo as a bad example is the same as Jean-Claude Trichet, the Merkels and our European masters telling Ireland to take the pain of austerity. The people of Sligo should not have to do the same. Will the Minister make the funds available to assist the citizens of Sligo, assistance to which they are as entitled as every other citizen?