Councils on alert as freeze put on Mayo’s funding
‘Mayo will not be getting a penny’
RURAL Affairs Minister Heather Humphreys has sent a stark message to local authorities to get their accounts in order after she froze funding to a council at the centre of a €1.2m audit controversy, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
Mayo County Council had to pay back the money to the Government after an internal audit uncovered miscoded invoices and instances where money was drawn down before any work had been done.
The local authority had been awarded significant grants for tourism and amenity projects by the Department of Rural and Community Development, including €200,000 to develop a 45m suspended cycle bridge as part of the Achill Island Greenway.
However, a departmental audit of the schemes found major problems across five separate grants resulting in the repayment of over €1.2m.
Councillors recently met to discuss the cut-off in funding, at which it was agreed to send a delegation to repair relations with Ms Humphreys.
At a meeting about the controversy in December, some councillors attempted to play it down. Fianna Fáil councillor Al McDonnell claimed the council’s accounting woes were common in local authorities.
He told the MoS: ‘I know the people involved in this. I have every confidence they are people who went above and beyond the call of duty.’
This was echoed by Fine Gael’s Cyril Burke, who said, ‘My fear is that officers of Mayo County Council will be afraid to apply for projects’.
Under the minister’s funding clampdown, the council has not received any money from three critical rural development schemes.
Senior Government sources told the MoS a decision has been made at the ‘highest level’ that ‘Mayo will not be getting a penny for anything until it resolves its issues with the department’.
At the council’s most recent meeting in February, Fine Gael councillor Donna Sheridan said Mayo’s failure to receive any of the €18.5m funding announced under the Towns and Villages Scheme was the third round of grants the county had missed out on.
Ms Sheridan called for ‘the reinstatement of Mayo County Council in good standing with the department’, while her party colleague, Jarlath Munnelly, proposed that a delegation meet with Ms Humphreys to restore the relationship.
One political figure said: ‘They are panicking. But the minister is absolutely not going to let councillors run riot with taxpayers’ money. They are learning a hard lesson.’
In its most recent update of the audit process at the end of last month, the council confirmed that 95 audits and reviews of projects have taken place or are taking place.
The report – seen by the MoS – also notes that the ‘decommitted grant funding has been repaid to the department’ as of January 2022.
A statement from the department on the 2021 Town and Village Renewal Scheme said, ‘While Mayo Co. Council did submit a number of applications to this scheme in July 2021, these applications were not considered for funding at this time, as the department continues to engage with Mayo County Council in relation to the ongoing review of expenditure under its schemes’.
‘They are learning a hard lesson’