The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Clare’s most senior civil servant has confirmed that local authorities here have been seriously examining the possibility of Clare County Council absorbing services, and possibly staff, from town councils here.
Speaking to The Clare Champion, county manager Tom Coughlan said this “is something that we’re looking at very actively and that we’ve been looking at for a number of months”.
Mr Coughlan added, “It’s obviously an initiative that we’ve [Clare County Council, in conjunction with the town councils] been considering.
“The Efficiency Review Group, which reported on achieving efficiencies in local government, identified the fact that there is an element of duplication in the delivery of town or county services and recommended we take steps to see if we can reduce levels of duplication. We have been doing that,” he said.
A decision on the restructuring of local authorities around the country was expected this week. However, the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government has confirmed that “the issue will be re-visited in September, with possible publication in the autumn, until then the issue remains to be finalised by Government”.
Mr Coughlan said that if a decision is made to abolish town councils, he does not expect this to happen within the next two years, adding that jobs in town councils would be safe.
“If Ennis Town Council was to be abolished in the morning, a housing service, a planning service, a road service, all the services would still have to be delivered to the people of Ennis. We still need staff to do that. There may be efficiencies achieved by way of providing a satellite service but there will still be a level of service that needs to be delivered. The other thing is, if the minister decided he was going to abolish town councils, it’s unlikely it would take effect immediately. It would probably be up to 2014,” he said.
Despite discussions taking place about possible ‘efficiencies’ that could be achieved if town and county councils merged, Mr Coughlan has said no action will be taken in advance of an announcement by Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan, on the subject.
“Obviously, we’re not taking any action on that until we see what the minister has to say. If the minister decides he is not going to abolish town councils, it doesn’t mean that we [disregard this and] stop delivering services through town councils… We are going to look at more efficient ways of delivering the services. The important thing is the service that the person gets. We’ll take care of the back office and the processes that need to be done. If they can be done through Clare County Council and achieve efficiencies and still deliver the same service to the members of the public, that’s obviously something that we need to look at,” he concluded.
