Councillors call for clarity on discretionary spending

Councillors call for clarity on discretionary spending funds


Anton McNulty

County Councillors in the West Mayo Municipal District have called for clarity with regard to their discretionary spending fund and how and where it can be spent.
Mayo County Council’s annual budget allocated €440,000 for the councillors’ discretionary spending fund for the West Mayo area, which can be spent on community projects in the area. However, at last week’s monthly meeting of the Municipal District held in Nevin’s Newfield Inn in Tiernaur, councillors said there was a lot of confusion on where this money can spent.
Independent councillor Michael Holmes was among the councillors to raise the issue and said that the perception amongst the public was that the money can be spent by councillors on whatever they wanted.
“Most councillors at community meetings get a lot of questions on how it works and how they get their hands on it [discretionary funding]. There is a thinking that the money is divided up among the seven councillors and they can spend it what they want. The end result is that is great to have it, particularly in areas outside Westporwho did not have it previously, but the reality is this money will make councillors lots of friends, but also lot of enemies,” he said.
Fianna FΡil councillor Brendan Mulroy also commented that there needed to be ‘clarity’ on the issue of discretionary funding. He said there was a perception councillors had €80 to €90,000 ‘in their backpocket’ to spend on what they wanted. He suggested that a workshop be set up to see the money can be spent.
Director of Services, Martin Keating explained that councillors did not have ‘complete and utter discretion’ on spending and programmes ‘will have to be delivered’. He gave an example that funding for burial grounds had to be taken from the discretionary fund and councillors could not decide to disregard this.
Mr Keating said the Council had an ‘open and transparent way’ of supporting community groups in the past and they will continue to do this.