Council to increase spending by €2.7M

Though unanimously accepted, Cavan County Council’s first increase in the rate of evaluation in eight years was adopted with stipulations. Local authority members sought a commitment from the executive of no further increases in the lifetime of this particular council.

CEO of the authority, Tommy Ryan, said, by adopting the budget, the members have ensured that the council is “in a good position financially” to deliver services and invest in the future.

Mr Ryan said he could not envision a need for further increases, but added the caveat: “It would be remiss of me to say that, if something happened in the lifetime of this council we haven’t anticipated... I can’t give a categoric guarantee, but based on our projections ‘no’. But we don’t know what is going to happen.”

Head of Finance, Margaret McNally broke down the numbers of the budget for the members. Ms McNally said the Draft Budget for 2022 provides for total expenditure of €81,463,851, an increase of €2,711,509 on the adopted figure from 2021.

Planned department spends in the coming year are: housing €10.8M, roads €25.2M, water €8.2M, development management €13.4M, environmental services €8.6M, recreation €6.3M, agriculture education €0.7M and miscellaneous services €7.7M.

In terms of income, commercial rates will net Cavan County Council €18,406,298 in 2022, Road Grants bring in €15,225,773, other government grants are €20,717,458, while the Local Property Tax totals €10,162,936. Irish water levies agreement is €4,454,018 and the proceeds from the sales of goods and services is €12,497,368.

Significant funding is being made available to Local Government through national funding schemes including: urban regeneration funding, rural regeneration funding, large scale sports infrastructure funding, economic development fund, business funding through Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, platform for growth tourism funding through Fáilte Ireland, cultural funding, climate actions funding, border investment funding, shared island funding, peace plus, CLAR, Town and Village Renewal and LEADER.

Mr Ryan said the challenge was “to deliver more with less”. He acknowledged the “commitment and hard work of staff to maintaining and ever improving the level of service to our customers”.

Cathaoirleach Clifford Kelly thanked the CEO and his team for putting the budget together. He said it was a very difficult decision for members to take to approve the rates increase.

The Cathaoirleach said local authority staff worked very hard to avail of funding for capital projects and spoke of their importance in the future development of the county.

“Each Municipal District will benefit from the decision we are taking here today,” he said, “it is a tough decision, but one we have to make.”

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