Payroll costs are Kerry council’s biggest expense

Payroll costs, including travel and subsistence, represent the biggest single expense for Kerry County Council, its 2016 budget meeting was told yesterday.

Overall, the council will spend almost €125m, but almost half will relate to staffing costs.

The council employs 1,249 people, including part-time. A graph presented to county councillors showed 50% of the budget allocation — €63m — will be spent on payroll costs.

Independent councillor Danny Healy-Rae, however, pointed out that key staff numbers on the roads programme, in particular, had been halved in recent years.

Roads remains the council’s biggest expenditure programme. ‘Coalface’ staff numbers, he said, had been reduced in the Killarney area despite its administration area being extended.

“In the Killarney engineering area where there had been six crews, there are now three and ye have added Castleisland,” he told officials.

He said a fund for councillors — in which individual members could allocate finance to certain minor projects, such as road repairs — had been almost untouched as the staff to carry out maintenance work were not available.

Maintenance crews, he said, were under huge pressure. Gullies remained unblocked, maintenance was not being done and the previous good work on Kerry roads, up to 2008, was literally being eroded.

Meanwhile, the two largest programmes earmarked for funding are roads (€30m) and housing (€23.5m).

With more than 4,000 local authority properties, Kerry County Council was “one of the biggest local authority housing bodies in the country, outside of Dublin”, said chief executive Moira Murrell.

It has large land banks, and the council is to assess the viability of these in 2016, she said.

The council, however, will manage to balance its budget this year, said head of finance Angela McAllen.

When it comes to income, rates accounted for €41.3m which was a third of all revenue.

Maximising the collection of rates was a priority for the council, said Ms McAllen. The council, she said, fully accepted rates were a significant expense for businesses.

However “a distinction needs to be made between those businesses that have genuine trading difficulties and those apparently unwilling to pay”, Ms McAllen cautioned.

Meanwhile, half of the rates’ figure was paid by just 3% of the council’s “customers”, she said.

Meanwhile, the yield from local property tax in Kerry is expected to be €11.6m, while Irish Water is to provide €13.3m towards maintenance.

Central government funding will amount to €28m. Other local income which the council is scheduled to receive is housing rents (almost €9m) and parking charges (€2.8m).

Parking charges and fines were “a critical” source of income for the council, the executive emphasised.

Over €300,000 will be derived from the sale of graves which have a standard price of €425 a plot.