Report card rates performance of local authorities

CORK CITY has the highest rate of rubbish going to landfill, Mayo has provided the least Traveller accommodation and Carlow has the longest public library opening hours, it emerged yesterday.

The Department of the Environment and Local Government revealed the figures for 42 separate services provided by the 34 local authorities across the country.

The categories included the length of time taken to grant planning applications, the enforcement of litter laws, the collection rates for water charges and the number of housing repairs completed.

The service indicators reveal 97.45% of waste in Cork City went to landfill, compared with 43% in Galway City.

Mayo County Council achieved just 43% of its targets for accommodating Traveller families, while Longford County Council achieved 220% of its target.

Although the average opening time for libraries was 38.67 hours, Carlow exceeded this with an average opening time of 46 hours. Wexford had the shortest opening times with just 27 hours.

Local authorities were ordered to gather the information for 2004 after the publication of a report on service delivery last year.

Environment Minister Dick Roche said it was the first step towards getting an accurate assessment of the work done by local authorities.

Mr Roche said the aim of the service indicators was to develop best practice across all the local authorities. “The point of this is not to pillory anyone who performs less than the average,” he said.

Local authorities granted planning permission for 100,000 houses last year and investigated 10,000 planning complaints, resulting in 755 prosecutions.

The local authority with the highest level of planning refusals was South Dublin County Council with about 45% turned down.

The local authority which granted the most planning applications was Limerick City Council, with about 91%.

Mr Roche said he was pleased with the work of planning departments but disappointed there were such variations in another area, the collection of domestic water charges. The collection rate ranged from about 93% in South Tipperary County Council to about 40% in Wicklow County Council.

“The collection of water charges is disappointing in some cases and some attention will have to be paid to that,” he said.

The part-time firefighters of Co Louth were the quickest to mobilise in an emergency with a response time of 3.94 minutes, compared to 6.43 minutes in Co Donegal.

The County and City Managers Association said it welcomed the figures and it would be encouraging its members to use them to analyse their performance.