'Shoestring' budget is rejected by councillors

Members of Westport-Belmullet Municipal District (MD) have rejected a General Municipal Allocation (GMA) draft budget for 2025 after claiming that insufficient funds are being allocated to the area year after year.

The GMA is a discretionary fund available to each councillor to spend on local organisations and projects. 

At a meeting last week to discuss the draft budget, the head of the district Seamus O Mongain said €490,000 was being made available to Westport-Belmullet out of a total GMA fund of €2.1m for the county.

Fine Gael Cllr Peter Flynn said the funding was the same as last year, adding: “If ever you want to see how broken local government is then this budgetary process is it. This is a one-line item regarding €2.1m, from which we are receiving just €490,000 and we are being asked here to rubber-stamp [it]. This really is an insult both to the executive and the public at large.

“If we had any sort of proper budgetary process we would be receiving what the real requirement is to run the MD for the year, which is right now working off a shoestring. There is no money to repair houses, clean the streets, fix the potholes, and very little in the way of overtime or essential maintenance works. That discretion is now gone, and we see the impact of all of this every day where people are looking for small jobs to be done and we are failing them because we are completely constrained by the lack of discretionary spending available."

Independent Cllr John O’Malley said he finds it “embarrassing sometimes that we never have a penny in the MD to do anything”, adding that this applied particularly to visiting delegations.

“We can’t even buy them a cup of tea. I remember the people from Limavaddy, they came all the way down here, there was nobody to meet them only me. They invited me to dinner and then they paid for it themselves because there was no money to even buy them a meal. The same thing happened with the people from Slovenia.

“It is all very embarrassing. There is no money around town and anything that is done is not done to last, but is only half repaired.

“There is just an awful lot of things around the town not being done because there is no money. We are not getting enough in the MD. We never have a penny to do anything for anyone or to help out. When people ask us about this that or the other and we have to tell them there’s no money, they can’t understand, as they are not asking for hundreds of thousands, just enough to cover small jobs.” 

Following a discussion about several other matters needing funding in the district, Cathaoirleach Cllr Sean Carey asked members: “Do we want to reject this budget? I propose we reject.” 

This was agreed to by the two other councillors present, with Cllr Gerry Coyle seconding the proposal and Cllr Peter Flynn saying he agreed it should be rejected absolutely.