Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is welcome. I thank the Office of the Cathaoirleach for choosing this matter.

We debated this topic when sittings were taking place in the convention centre. In that context, I may be making the same speech several years later on funding issues relating to Galway County Council. Most of us are former members of local authorities. We know the range of services that they provide. These services, which relate to road maintenance, hedge cutting, community wardens, housing maintenance, planning enforcement, active travel applications, graveyards, community funding, economic development units, fire and emergency services, piers and harbours, broadband officers and the area for which the Minister of State has responsibility, namely, heritage, are very important. I listed many of the services that local authorities provide, but that list is not all-inclusive.

Galway has had a funding shortfall not for a few years but for a few decades. My colleagues from Galway and I had a meeting with officials from the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government in 2016 . The officials admitted that there was a funding shortfall in Galway compared with other counties that dated back to the late 1990s. They stated that the solution was the review of the local property tax, LPT. They said it was very difficult to do something in isolation for one local authority if it was not going to be done for all.

Since then, we have had numerous allocations to local authorities based on Covid and higher energy costs. I welcome all of these. Last year, Galway received €1.7 million of the €61 million made available to cover increased energy costs. It also received an additional €8.16 million for pay and pensions, including in respect of the new public sector pay deal. It received €2.755 million in recognition of its lower funding base. In previous years, it received one-off payments of €600,000 and €1 million when Deputy John Paul Phelan was Minister of State. These were welcome, but they were only an attempt to plug a massive hole in the finances of Galway County Council.

Without significant uplift under the review of the LPT, Galway will continue to suffer in the context of its ability to deliver the projects for which there is State funding, including those relating to active travel and the public realm. These are measures of which all local authorities, including Galway, want to be able to deliver more. There is funding under the rural regeneration and development fund. There is also active travel funding. Galway County Council does tremendous work with the resources it has but it needs more engineers, architects and planners to be able to deliver. Planning staff are under enormous pressure. The number of files they have to deal with compared with colleagues in Mayo and other places is large. It is unfair on them and on the services they are trying to provide for people in Galway.

While the provision of €1 million here or €3 million there is welcome, we need massive investment in Galway to bring it up to a level comparable with other counties. All of the figures have been provided to the Department. These are figures on per capitaspend in Galway versus in other local authority areas on housing and the provision of other services. We need a major uplift on the baseline funding rate for Galway County Council.