Cork County Council forks out €18m on consultants

Cork County Council spent more than €18m on employing external consultants during the past two years, according to figures released by the local authority yesterday.

The council came in for criticism after the figures, which were released to Cllr Seamus McGrath (FF), showed it spent €7,745,161 on outside consultants in 2012 and a further €10,478,157 last year. That represented 3% of the council’s income for 2013.

Last year’s figures include a €2.1m payment for the Lower Harbour (Sewerage) Project, and €1.5m for water services.

The biggest payments in 2012 were €2,675,953 for consultants engaged in water services projects and €1,438,862 for roads, transportation and safety.

Water services consultants pocketed €5,509,384 last year, while the payout under roads, transportation and safety programmes totalled €1.06m.

Cllr McGrath said it was obvious consultants were being paid an increasing share of the council’s budget.

“There is a growing tendency to employ these people and I would argue there is an over-reliance on employing them. I agree it is necessary on occasion to employ particular outside expertise, like the clean-up of Haulbowline (toxic dump), but I think it’s crept in too much,” he said.

He added that some projects, such as minor flood relief works, public lighting schemes etc could surely be done by the council’s own staff.

“The trend over the last five years is that the number of our full-time staff is reducing and the number of external consultants being employed is increasing, This is a worrying trend because, as we know, external consultants don’t come cheap,” Cllr McGrath said.

Cllr Aindrias Moynihan (FF) said €18m “sounded an enormous figure.”

“Surely there must be expertise within the council staff to carry out some of these projects. If the expertise isn’t there then we should be upskilling our staff,” Cllr Moynihan said.

Mayor of Co Cork Cllr Noel O’Connor (FG) said a core of consultants seem to get all the contracts.

“Others should be able to get a fair shot and I agree we have to be conscious that some of the work could be done internally,” he said.

County manager Tim Lucey said the council only engages consultants where they are needed to progress schemes.

However, he admitted that the loss of around 900 council staff in the past few years didn’t help.

But he said the money spent on external consultants was “an extremely small percentage of our overall expenditure and they’re not at a level which would cause significant concern to me.”