County Council faces €1.4m shortfall after amalgamation vote

Cuts of €1.4 million may have to be made to Galway County Council’s budget this year following the Seanad’s vote against a proposal to press ahead with the amalgamation of the two local authorities.

The fund was committed by the Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform John Paul Phelan in “anticipation of the merger, in order that they can beef up the services they are giving in the towns and rural areas around Galway”.

However, in late December a majority of senators voted to remove all references to Galway in the Local Government Reform Bill 2018.

The legislation had advocated replacing the chief executive of Galway City Council and County Council with a single post of chief executive of both and holding a plebiscite on whether to have a directly elected mayor with executive functions for both local authorities in anticipation of the merger in 2021.

The Junior Minister had warned senators that the €1.4m this year and €1.3m for the following two years would “not happen if the section is not included in the Bill because the fund is dedicated to local government reform”.

During the debate, he admitted that Galway County Council received approximately €5 million per annum less than it should receive.

At this month’s meeting, County Chief Executive Kevin Kelly asked councillors to defer a debate about reforming the municipal districts until he could submit a proposal to the Minister asking for the allocation and setting out plans for the reform of the municipal districts to allow more functions to be carried out at local level.

Mr Kelly said the Minister had stated after the Seanad decision that his door was still open regarding the funding if the Council could show it was serious about reform.

“In that context there’s a clear invitation to Galway County Council to submit a proposal for reform,” he urged.

Sinn Féin and many of the independent councillors berated the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors for including the €1.4m in the budget.

“You were told not to pass a budget on the basis of money that didn’t exist,” railed Cllr Tom Healy (SF).

A proposal by Cllr Mary Hoade (FF) to defer both the debate on municipal district reform and adjusting the budget to take into account a cut of €1.4m was agreed.

The proposed amalgamation is still set to go ahead and will be the subject of a separate bill later this year.

Deputy Phelan said that Bill would restore a common management structure in Galway that was in place for over 100 years until 1985.

“The reality is that the divorce that took place in 1985 which we will be seeking to reverse next year in a different Bill was never really effective in the first place and the issue of the funding of Galway County Council was never resolved properly,” he told the Seanad.

He said despite the opposition of most of the Galway TDs and 54 of the 57 councillors, “there was no ground-swell of public opinion in Galway against the proposed merger”.