Mayo County Council's €220m budget adopted

Mayo councillors have adopted a €219.6m budget for next year.

There will be no increase in commercial rates. Peter Duggan, Mayo County Council’s head of finance, told the annual budget meeting that State grants of €117.1m accounts for 53% of the council’s funding sources.

Commercial rates of €46.1m accounts for 21% of the council’s budget and Local Property Tax (LPT) of €23 million makes up 10.5% of the local authority’s funding.

Fine Gael’s Peter Flynn welcomed the unchanged rates. “There are no surprises in there which is always a good sign when you come into a budget meeting. I’m particularly delighted that our rates will remain the same. I think that’s a really important message to be put out. The business community as a whole are finding it tough to keep the doors open,” said Cllr Flynn.

“In an ideal world we would leave to be reducing the rate but we have to deal with cost inflation,” he added. Cllr Flynn said the continuation of the Small Business Support Scheme is also beneficial.

An increase in funding for regional roads and housing maintenance was also welcomed by councillors.

Cllr Flynn said he would like to see the speed of turning around vacant social housing stock improved.

There is an additional €500,000 in the budget for planning and planning enforcement.

“We are supporting that on the basis that we are going to see some real change. This idea of ‘further information’ for every single planning application needs to stop. We need to get back to where we have proper pre-planning. Where people know when they sit down with the planner and walk out that door they know if they are going to receive planning or not,” said Cllr Flynn.

Fianna Fail councillor Damien Ryan said a budget of just under €220 million is “hugely significant.” “Our job is leave the county better in 12 months time than we find it now,” Cllr Ryan stated.

He said the LPT remaining at the same rate as 2020 is a ‘challenge’ but ‘the right thing to do.’ Cllr Ryan called for additional resources for the Croi Connaithe office to allow more people to access grants quicker for the vacant and derelict property refurbishment scheme.

He put forward amendments to the proposed budget.

Cllr Ryan proposed an additional €65,000 for Community Promotion which takes the figure to €100,000.

He called for €100,000 in funding for the planning office to be ringfenced for planning enforcement and that additional income taken in from LPT be assigned to the Croi Connaithe office to address the backlog.

Cllr Ryan proposed that councillor’s discretionary spending allocation be increased from €38,500 to €50,000. He said the figure has remained unchanged for a decade.

The amendments were seconded by Cllr Flynn and the budget adopted.