This article is from page 10 of the 2013-03-26 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
CENTRAL government is being asked to stump up the cash to complete works in over 23 unfinished estates around the county after it was revealed that using money from its own resources could close libraries and lead to a further downgrading of the county’s road network.
The move was made at last Friday’s March meeting of Clare County Council when council officials backed the Revenue Commissioners ruling that only four housing estates in the county be exempt from the new property tax.
Amid calls for Clare County Council to take charge of every unfinished estate in the county and take responsibility for putting upgrading works in place, County Manager Tom Coughlan warned that such a policy would seriously impact on other lo- cal authority services.
“The money has to come for somewhere,” said Mr Coughlan. “The property tax is going to replace the Rates Support Grant. The property tax is going to go towards paying for services that the council is providing at the moment – that’s providing road services, that’s providing libraries, providing open spaces, all the services that the council provides.
“If you decide that the council puts a significant amount of money into unfinished estates, something else is going to have to suffer. The services we provide at the moment cannot be provided. Let me be very clear on that.
“You’ll find yourself in a situation where you’ll be deciding if you put money into roads, or whether you put money into unfinished estates. That’s the bottom line. The money has to come from somewhere, unless the money (for unfinished estates) comes from central government.
“You have a budget of about € 100m – of that the vast bulk is mandatory contractual work where you have no discretion. You have something between € 7 to € 10m where you can decide to spend money. If you decide you are going to spend money on unfinished estates, it comes from other services,” he added.
The County Manager made his comments after independent Shannon electoral area councillor, PJ Ryan called on revenues from the controversial new property tax to be “ring-fenced” for unfinished estates.
“It has to go directly back into those estates to bring them up to an acceptable standard,” said Cllr Ryan. “Our Oireachtas members have to support this, that this property tax isn’t taken off the council budget and is used to develop roads and other facilities around the county like unfinished estates,” he added.