Every cut made by councils will hit somebody, somewhere

Whether its turning off street lights or less cleaning hours, all cuts will be felt, says Caroline O’Doherty

SCHOOL children dismayed and tourism operators sighed, but for some local authorities, the wearily wet summer of 2012 was a blessing in disguise.

“We had a significant reduction in the amount of gorse fires in the county. As a result, money we had budgeted for gorse fire activity wasn’t spent,” Kerry County Council told the Irish Examiner, delighted to be able to see a silver lining of around €50,000 in unspent funds in the dark cloud of the county’s finances.

“We had budgeted for maintenance of our outdoor areas, such as beaches, etc. Again due to the bad weather, we didn’t have as much activity here and that resulted in savings.”

For other councils, however, the same weather that doused spending in neighbouring counties soaked up their own resources as flooding forced them to fork out for road clearance and repairs.

Cork County Council was among them, and officials were relieved to get notification that they could draw down on their 2013 central government allocation to help get affected national roads functioning without delay, although what that will mean for next year’s funds is not yet known.

Meanwhile, in the west of Co Cork, councillors were proposing that members of the public be drafted in to clear ditches along local roads to improve neglected drainage and prevent puddles turning into lakes and potholes into craters.

Such are the headaches facing local authorities as budgets become tighter and an extra drop of rain can make the difference between balancing the books and looking like Ballymagash.

Much has been made of the effect of the new household charge, with councils that failed to get collection rates up to 65% having their quarterly allocation of money from the Department of the Environment’s Local Government Fund docked.

Environment Minister Phil Hogan yesterday trumpeted that, nationally, a collection rate of 70% had been achieved — something he saw as a firm kick up the posterior for the “doom merchants” who predicted widescale non-compliance.

But, in reality, it is not just the 0.5% or 1% cuts (for collection rates under 65% and under 60% respectively) in the Local Government Fund allocations that put a strain on councils this year but the continuing fall-off in commercial rates and development levies — sources of funding that will only return if the economy recovers.

In the meantime, councils are having to get more inventive — or ruthless — in finding ways to save money, and that situation is set to continue into next year, according to the 2013 budgets finalised by officials and councillors in the last fortnight.

The planned abolition of town councils in 2014 is already reaping some benefits as several councils said they had decided as a cost-saving measure not to set aside their usual sum towards the local elections due that year.

But those savings opportunities, such as the gorse fires that didn’t happen, are few and far between. For all councils, the big spend items are also essentials: Roads, housing, and water.

Some are grasping the nettle quicker than others. Monaghan county council said the “major impact” of its cutbacks would be on local roads, while Limerick is shaving a substantial €700,000 off its local roads budget.

Meanwhile, in Kildare, they were tinkering with switching street lights off in housing estates, leading to adiscussion at a meeting just before Christmas about whether it would be preferable to switch off every second light over a wider urban area rather than leave some areas in darkness.

Of the 23 county councils that replied to queries from the Irish Examiner about the kind of cuts they were making, the majority said they were reducing spending across all items of expenditure, stressing they were doing so in order to minimise the effect in any one area.

But there are few areas they can touch without hurting somebody. Under the general heading of housing, proposed cuts in home adaptation grants for people with disabilities received a lot of negative attention in Offaly, and while restricting library hours might have seemed an easy option for several councils, it has proved an emotive move.

One area of spending that comes up repeatedly in the councils’ replies as a target for cuts is street cleaning. At first glance, it seems one of the least objectionable cuts, the potential damage of which could be limited by a more conscientious public.

Eamon McKeon, chief executive of the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, sees it differently, though, and is alarmed by the proposals in some councils to miss the odd day of street sweeping and cut down on the opening hours of recycling centre.

“The only sector that can get us out of the hole we are in is the business sector,” said Mr McKeon. “It’s the business sector that creates jobs and in a town where business is dependent on tourism, the councils have to look at what such ‘savings’ would do to hotels, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and leisure attractions.

“It’s a fragile flower, tourism. It took us a long time to build our reputation for cleanliness — we were known for long enough for having dirty towns — but the way technology is now, a reputation can be lost again in an instant.

“Anyone with a smartphone can be on TripAdvisor posting pictures of a pile of rubbish while they’re standing looking at it and it takes years to restore a reputation if you lose it.”

That’s something councillors and officials must be aware of as they wonder how their reputations fare while the effects of their latest axe-swinging begin to be felt in the months ahead.