County council count pennies as funding plummets

CLARE County Council’s budget for the coming year will be severely impacted by a significant reduction in development contributions and less funding from the Local Government Fund.
According to the council’s acting head of finance, Noeleen Fitzgerald, changed conditions have resulted in “a very difficult budget process”.
The amount of money collected by the council in development contributions in previous years reached several million while this year only €500,000 has been collected.
“This sets the tone for Budget 2011 and it does set out a different situation for next year,” Ms Fitzgerald continued.
Councillor Gerry Flynn stated he was unhappy with the “amount of money we are squandering now on Traveller accommodation”. He claimed that “quite a lot of resources the Housing Section are being eaten up by vandalism of these sites” and urged the Housing Section to tackle the situation.
Councillor PJ Ryan proposed a motion that the council would consider “a suitably deferred rate collection system as the present arrangement is causing severe financial difficulties for businesses”.
He cited the case of one business owner, who was asked to pay more than a quarter of a million euro in rates and a publican who employed 15 people that was required to pay €48,000 per annum or “nearly €1,000 per week”.
County manager Tom Coughlan said the council had been asked to reduce rates on the basis that a company or business would have to let people go if they couldn’t get a reduction in their rate bill.
“I say to them that we have already cut staff. We currently have 120 vacant positions in Clare County Council. We had to do that because we don’t have the money to pay staff. If we don’t get the money in we can’t spend it on delivering services. If there is to be a cut in rates then you have to identify where to cut that money from, do you want to cut roads, staff, cut waste water management and maintenance. If we reduce our income, how can we put more money into the likes of playgrounds. If the income doesn’t come in then expenditure has to be cut. We have taken a sympathetic approach to those in difficulties. We accept instalments and look at payment plan options with businesses. If there is no cash flow then remember, we employ local suppliers and if we can’t get the income, we can’t pay the suppliers and they then go out of business. There has been no increase in the rates this year, there has been a reduction of 3% on non-domestic water services. The level of payment of rates has reduced and if we don’t get income in then we have got a very serious problem,” Mr Coughlan stressed.