Councils pay for State failings

THE Government’s ongoing refusal to put localauthority funding on a proper footing is preventing local authorities from investing in social housing.

Yet it is the local authority staff that are being forced to answer for the “massive policy failure” when families approach them for support.

That is according to the chairman of trade union IMPACT’s local government section, Alice Hennessy who last night addressed the union’s biennial conference in Ennis. She said staff find themselves at the rough end of Government policies that stymie local authority services.

“They are working to provide excellent services, but often bear the brunt of criticism for policy failures and poor funding. Nowhere is this more acute than in the area of social housing,” she said.

“It is not Government ministers who have to give the bad news when people come to their local council to seek help and advice. That task falls to our members on the front line. Why should they be expected to answer for this massive and ongoing policy failure?”

“The Government has failed to deliver on affordable housing, not least by allowing developers to cop out of the commitments under part five of the Planning and Development Act, and seeks always to push local councils into private sector solutions,” she said.

Running in tandem with Impact’s local government conference is its civil service conference.

The chairman of that section, Una Geaney, said civil servants were also bearing the brunt for Government inefficiencies.

“If you arrived in Ennis from Mars and spent a week reading the papers, you would come to the conclusion that the Irish public service was a hopeless basket case, characterised by waste, incompetence, inflexibility and disruption.

“Yet many international studies have rated the performance and efficiency of Ireland’s public services above the international average,” she said.