Councillors claim €1.7m in allowances
FIGURES for 2015 have revealed that the Cork County Council’s 55 elected members claimed more than €1.7 million in allowances and expenses between them during the year.
The figures for the year are contained on a document freely available to view entitled ‘Members Expenses – January to December 2015’ on the Cork County Council website.
It showed that between standard representational payments and other expenses the councillors claimed a grand total of €1,718,566.91 in payments over the 12-month period.
The document lists the number of full council, regional and municipal district meetings each of the county councillors attended during the year. It also lists the number of additional meetings they attended as members of different sub-committees covering a wide range of headings such as joint policing, strategic policy, European affairs, library, 1916 commemorations and rural water monitoring.
It also gives an overview of the conferences, training conferences and external meetings councillors attended in their official capacity during the year. In addition it gives a breakdown of the foreign trips that Cllrs Alan Coleman and John Paul O’Shea made during their respective terms in office as County Mayor.
Each councillors individual total payments for the year include a standard representational payment (or basic salary) of €16,508.18 , a combined monthly allowance that varies slightly for each member and allowances for chairing specific committees.
Other categories of expenses listed include those for training, conferences and external bodies expenses. Not one of the councillors made a single claim in the ‘other expenses’ column, while only a handful of councillors aside from Cllrs Coleman and O’Shea claimed for foreign travel expenses.
It came as no surprise that Cllr Coleman, who was County Mayor for the first six-months of the year and Cllr O’Shea, who held the office for the rest of 2015 received the highest individual payments.
Cllr Coleman claimed €66,260.92, which included a mayor’s allowance of €25,273.71 and foreign travel expenses of €5,659.33. Cllr O’Shea, whose term as mayor will draw to a close on Friday, claimed a total for the years of €69,021.32, which included a mayors allowance of €25,405.57 and foreign travel expenses €1,702.58.
The remaining individual tallies for the other 53 councillors varied with the lowest figure of €22,378.50 claimed by Douglas based Cllr Joe Harris.
Only three members claimed over €40,000 in allowances and expenses for the year.
The highest was Skibbereen-based Cllr Joe Carroll (€42,912.11), followed by former councillor and now TD Aindrias Moynihan (€41,531.57) and Meelin’s Cllr Timmy Collins (€41,231.35). It is worth noting that both Cllr Carroll’s and Cllr Collins totals included a deputy mayors allowance.