News
€137m budget to run county voted through
A budget of nearly €137 million has been adopted for Galway County Council for next year, with an eleventh-hour extra allocation from the Department of Environment to partially offset a big shortfall from a decreased rates valuation for utilities divided up by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors.
The interim Chief Executive Kevin Kelly reminded councillors there was no provision for contingencies in the 2016 budget which he described as challenging. There was €104m earmarked for gross expenditure and €32m spending for capital projects.
Commercial rates would remain unchanged for a seventh year at €66.59, with the exception of Ballinasloe which had its rate increased by €3 to €55. Almost half the businesses in Ballinasloe will see rates jump by €105 a year, with a plan to bring rates in line with other county towns by 2024.
A provision of €100,000 has been set aside to offset the cost of providing free parking for two hours across county towns, with municipal district areas to decide whether to introduce the measure in the New Year in exchange for a reduction in their roads budget.
Free all-day parking in the lead-up to Christmas in county towns has been agreed.
A gap of €750,000 emerged in the books when the Valuation Office revealed that it had set rates valuations for the utility companies such as the ESB and Eircom at a lower rate than previously for the next five years.
Following a meeting between Junior Minister at the Department of the Environment Paudie Coffey with a delegation of councillors, further funding of €573,000 will be handed to Galway Council Council for 2016, Cllr Jimmy McClearn (FG) told the meeting.
“What was a difficult situation is a very manageable situation now,” he remarked. “It’s important we’re not living in a negative world. It’s a positive world. It’s not all bad lads – cheer up. You don’t see any fruit in the tree.”
A pact between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil divided this amount up, including an allocation of €300,000 to roads maintenance, €50,000 for disabled person grants, €40,000 each for public lighting and economic development, €35,000 for community grants and €30,000 for street cleaning.
No matter which way you looked at it, the council’s coffers were still down on 2015 by €113,000, fumed Cllr Noel Thomas, who said he did not want to be associated with any remarks welcoming the additional grant.
The Fianna Fáil Councillor urged the council to spend money on cleaning out gullies which would save millions of taxpayers’ money on repairing roads, much of it unnecessarily if the gullies were cleared regularly.
Cllr James Charity (Ind) said with that kind of budget hole, Cllr McClearn was “looking a lot more link Grinch than Father Christmas”.
Sinn Féin’s Tom Healy said the local authority should seek to retrofit public lighting with LED lights, which would give an annual saving of €900,000 immediately.
Director of Services for Roads and Transportation Liam Gavin said a massive capital investment would be required to change the 13,000 lights across the county under the charge of the council. But he said the savings would be significant.
Cllr Shaune Cunniffe (Ind) lambasted the council for its lack of provision for bad debts for commercial rates. Cumulative uncollected debts were going to “paralyse” Galway County Council as some of these businesses were long gone and there was no hope of ever collecting them.
Mr Kelly said last year’s arrears were €10m with a bad debt provision in the books of €4m.
“The opinion of the auditor is it should be a bit higher but he’s broadly satisfied with the bad debt provision. Today, by increasing that provision, you have to decrease expenditure somewhere else,” he explained.
Cllr Tim Broderick (Ind) said councillors were like ostriches in the sand, refusing to deal with the issue of uncollected rates and if the council were a business it would cease to exist with that level of debt.
The extra €577,000 in funding, as proposed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, was passed, with seven voting against it, including the Sinn Féin councillors, Independents Shaun Cunniffe, Tom Healy, Jim Cuddy and James Charity.
The overall budget was adopted with 24 of the 39 councillors voting in favour of it.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
