Councils ‘may turn off street lights’

Street lights may have to be switched off and parks closed as “extreme measures” are taken by local authorities to balance budgets because of the non-payment of the household charge.

Paul McSweeney of the Local Authority Management Agency, which is tasked with collecting the €100 tax, said councils are “looking down the back of sofas” for savings to meet shortfalls totalling €60m.

Finance officers in most local authorities are drawing up budget reports which will be debated at meetings in September when councillors will decide the areas where the axe should fall.

Galway County Council this week sent letters to recipients of community support grants and household grants for disabled people, telling them this year’s payments have been suspended.

More than 200 arts and community groups were told their grants were being “withheld until further notice” because 44% of households have not paid the charge, leaving the council €3.1m below budget.

Cork county also plans to defer spending €250,000 on community grant funding until next year as it tries to reach €2.85m in savings.

Roscommon mayor Tom Crosby said a number of grants and services are being suspended, including housing grants for elderly and disabled people. From tomorrow, all recycling sites will be closed and mobile libraries will stop. “The council has no alternative because the money is already stopped. We are in a very, very serious situation.”

Cutting staff wages is not an option because they are protected under the Croke Park deal. His council wrote to all households urging them to pay the charge.

About 1m households have paid the charge, leaving 600,000 who have not. This means €99.8m has been collected, far short of the €160m expected.

Local authorities received letters from the Department of the Environment last week informing them of cuts to their central funding for the third quarter.

He told Newstalk radio: “Local authority managers are obliged legally to balance the books and in order to do that, they now have to introduce emergency budgets, looking at every single item of expenditure and looking to see where they can make the cuts. We’re at a point now where local authorities are looking down the back of the sofa. There isn’t any easy target here.”

Certain parts of the country have had a high level of compliance but others, such as Donegal, have payment rates of around 50%.

Mr McSweeney said if there is not enough money for services, they will be stopped, “which is why parks will be closed, mobile libraries won’t be going out, we may have to start switching off street lights except at junctions. These are the inevitabilities of it because we must balance the books.”

Since Jul 2, 103,000 letters have been issued warning householders to pay the charge, resulting in 41,000 payments since then.

Mr McSweeney said second warning letters are being issued, addressed mainly to landlords. If third letters are issued, “there will be prosecutions”.

Campaigners against the charge said any threat of court action will be met with resistance and it will offer free legal advice to anyone taken to court.