MACROOM TO GET €2M EXTRA

• VAST BULK OF €8.9M ANNUAL FUNDING GOES ON ROADS MAINTENANCE • ROAD SWEEPING MACHINE A ‘WASTE OF MONEY’ SAYS COUNCILLOR

BOUNDARY changes earlier this year in the Macroom Municipal Districk have led to an increase of almost €2m in its budget for next year, councillors were told at the draft budgetary meeting on Friday.

The allocation of €8,935,401 for 2020 is up from €6,867,504 for this year, Principal District Officer Marie O’Leary informed the meeting in Macroom Town Hall.

The most significant part of the budget goes on roads with €8.43m of the total going on road transport and safety.

Of this €2.23m has been set aside for maintenance and improvement of regional roads while local roads have been allocated €5.98m for maintenance and improvement.

The balance goes on National Primary Roads (€109,929), road safety promotion (€20,675) and car parking (€77,252).

The next most significant category to attract funding is environmental services which gets a total of €268,714.

There are seven different categories in the draft budget under which funding has been allocated – road transport and safety, water services, environmental services, recreation and amenity, agriculture, education, health and welfare and miscellaneous services, under which provision for markets and casual trading is funded. The arts receive just €18,750.

According to Senior Executive Officer Nicola Radley, Macroom had been fortunate to get an increase in the budget under the new boundary arrangements as other municipal districts had not had such a positive outcome.

“This is essentially the first budget of the Macroom Municipal District – we’re into a new geographical area with a new population,” she said.

“Figures were looked at very stringently by Finance – Macroom is in a very fortunate position in that we have an increase in most of our areas now – not all municipal areas are in the fortunate position of going into a draft budget seeing an increase.”

Councillors were delighted with the increased allocation and Cllr Michael Creed was quick to claim credit for the increase which, he said, was due to the hike in the local property tax which had been proposed and agreed by Fine Gael at a full council meeting.

“We got a commitment at that meeting inside that if we did increase the property tax – which Cllr Coughlan voted for as well – that we would have increased funding for our local municipal area and the fruits of that has come to this meeting today,” he said.

Cllr Ted Lucey supported his party colleague saying any year ‘we got €2m of an increase’ is a good year.

Attention was drawn by Cllr Gobnait Moynihan to a slight decrease in the allocation for litter management of €45,657 but Ms. Radley pointed out that the boundary changes had led to Macroom Municipal District losing Blarney but gaining Millstreet.

“If there are minor changes in the allocation, that’s to reflect population changes,” said Ms. Radley.

Cllr Martin Coughlan pointed to the allocation of €119,156 for street sweeping which was slightly down on last year and said that if it wasn’t for the Tidy Town volunteers going out on Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings, the town of Macroom wouldn’t be presentable at all.

He called for more street sweepers to be employed to clean the streets and said the street sweeping machine that was used in the town wasn’t effective as parked cars blocked its path.

“It’s drawing dirt out on the street rather than cleaning it.

“It’s a vital thing that you have a street sweeper out on the street early in the morning before traffic gets bad or cars start parking.

“I can’t understand how all the money’s going on a big sweeper – a lot of the time it’s a waste of money.”

The draft budget was supported by the councillors and will now be forwarded to the full council meeting on November 11.

There the collated budget for all the county’s municipal districts will be put before the council for their final approval.