City Council struggling to provide front line services

Date Published: {J}

BY FRANK FARRAGHER

THE City Council is now ‘stretched to the limit’ in terms of being able to provide front line services for the people of Galway, a leading official has warned this week.

City Manager, Joe O’Neill, told The Sentinel that a combination of funding cuts, retirements and a restriction on recruitment now meant that they were ‘stretched to the limit’ to maintain services.

He said that back in 2008, the City Council had a staff complement of 535 but this had now dropped to 438 – a cut of close on 20% – with a lot of redeployment and reshuffling of resources having taken place in the meantime.

“There really is only so much redeployment and moving around of staff you can do. I am now at the point where we are hard pressed to maintain front line services – we do not have the resources to absorb any more cuts,” said Mr. O’Neill.

He said that national reports had shown savings or cuts in the Local Government budget for Ireland of €738m from 2008 on, with half of this being achieved in the non-pay sector.

“We are looking here at the provision of the basic services in refuse collection, keeping the city tidy, the maintenance of water and sewage services, keeping roads and footpaths repaired, and the maintenance of our local authority housing stock.

“These are all labour intensive areas and we just cannot keep the work done unless we have the people on the ground to carry out those tasks,” said Mr. O’Neill.

He said that while there was an overall moratorium on staff recruitment, there was some scope for ‘special cases’ applications to be made for vacancies to be filled.

“We initially have to see if there are people available from other local authorities to be redeployed but most cities and counties are in the ‘same boat’. However we can make a number of special case applications where the filling of a vacancy is regarded as being of critical importance,” said Mr. O’Neill.

He said that as City Manager, he had an obligation to ensure that front line services were provided for the people of Galway – it was important now to indicate to the Dept. of the Environment how stretched their resources were.

“What we are doing now is outlining in detail to the Dept. of the Environment, the extent to which our resources are stretched, and pointing out to them, that there is a line we cannot go beyond, if services are to be maintained.

“We are now very close to that point, and we just cannot keep losing staff on a regular basis and still hope to maintain services unless we can take on replacement staff,” said Joe O’Neill.