Newly elected County Councillor Peter Flynn has told the management of Mayo County Council that hard decisions were going to have to be made by them in relation to staffing levels in the council as it continues to try to keep it’s books balanced. The Fine Gael Councillor was speaking after Mr Peter Duggan, head of finance for the council, gave the members a briefing on the finanical review of the council for the first nine months of the year at the monthly meeting last Monday.
Cllr Flynn said: “It’s a wonderful aspiration to keep staffing levels the same, but I don’t think it’s achievable. We need to restructure and re-form and streamline the public sector, and it’s up to the top table to make the hard decisions.” He also went on to say: “I have no ambition to make anyone redundant, but people will probably say that Peter Flynn wants to see people redundant, I don’t. We’re moving people around the sections here, I’ve even heard of people from the architects section being moved into the finance section. It’s time that we came together, the 31 of us councillors and the senior management, before the budget sit-down and see what we have to do.”
Earlier Mr Duggan had given the members a briefing on the current financial state of the council. The council had to cope with a €10.2 million drop in its expected funding from central government this year compared to what it had planned for in its budget, leaving it with a total expenditure of €134,453,516 for the year. He told the meeting that the council had spent €99,037,985 at the end of September which was 73.8 per cent of its overall budget and was in line with revised figures after the cuts to funding were announced.
