Hynes warns about cost of town council U-turn

Anton McNulty

The Chief Executive of Mayo County Council has warned that a reintroduction of the town councils or increased powers for municipal districts would all come ‘at a significant cost’.
The clamour for the reintroduction of town councils was again raised at last week’s monthly meeting of Mayo County Council, with Westport councillor Christy Hyland describing the three main towns in Mayo as ‘tired’ as a result of reduced funding.
Fianna FΡil have introduced a bill before the DΡil for the reintroduction of town councils, which were abolished following the last local election. Cllr Hyland called for an extensive report by the county council on the operation of the new municipal district system, while Ballina councillor Gerry Ginty called for municipal districts to be given the power to strike rates.
However, Chief Executive Peter Hynes warned that while the restoration of town councils was a political decision, the required staffing and service provision would cost the local authority.
“I’m not suggesting it is not a good thing,” he said, “but it will have some costs, in fact it will have have significant costs.”
Mr Hynes said that local government was the only public sector to take a 26 percent drop in funding, and added that the ‘notion’ that it can continue to provide all of its functions on a reduced budget ‘cannot continue’.

All towns effected
In an introduction to the topic, Cllr Hyland argued that the abolition of the town councils was working neither for the three large towns nor the smaller towns.
“I don’t want to be negative but business people said to me that since the town councils were abolished their towns look tired. In a nutshell it is not working. The new system of abolishing town councils and bringing in municipal districts is not working, and it is not working for the smaller towns like Newport or Louisburgh or Achill either,” he said.
This suggestion was challenged by Achill councillor Paul McNamara who claimed that before the municipal districts areas like Achill got nothing prior to the abolishment of the town councils.
“We had nothing working for us before,” he told Cllr Hyland. “Our rate payers had no source of funding before municipal districts, and money is now coming down. We had no money before that.”
Independent councillor Gerry Ginty said he felt that town councils will eventually be reintroduced but ‘without any teeth’ to strike a rate, a situation that would be as useful as ‘a Mickey Mouse Show’.