This article is from page 18 of the 2014-10-14 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
THE East Clare Municipal District has been granted enough money to buy each person in the area a can of coke and a chocolate bar in discretionary local area funding for 2015.
Councillors at last Thursday’s area meeting voted to accept a discretionary budget of € 37,700 for the year ahead – of € 1.60 per person in the region. The areas had originally been granted just € 23,000 for the year head, or roughly € 1 per person, but this was increase last week following.
Councillors expressed their disappointment about the size of the budget, with members saying that is was not enough for a single project, never mind enough to cover an areas the size of the municipal district.
The low allocation is a direct consequence of the decision made two weeks ago to cut the overall household charge in Clare by 15 per cent. That proposal was supported by a coalition of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein and Independent councillors, while Fine Gael and independent Cllr Ian Lynch argued that more money should be allocated to councillors to spend on local projects.
“We’d all like to have more money. But unfortunately the decisions that was made on the property tax and that has resulted in this f gure. We tried our best to increase it and get as much as we could, but this is what we have,” said Cllr Joe Cooney (FG). This is the f rst local budget since the electoral areas were redrawn in June, with the East Clare area now growing to include some of the debunked North Clare Area.
“Basing this allocation on population is not ideal for the Killaloe area. This is a huge area. It is easy to blame the property tax for this [low amount of funding] but there were national issues at play in the amount of funding we have following that. If we had a million euro to spend that would be something,” said Cllr Pat Hayes (FF).
It was also pointed out that the € 37,700 allocation is not all the Clare County Council money that will be spent in East Clare in the coming year.
There will also be a programme of works, including roadworks, which will be allocated by the full council during its county wide budget later this year.