Cllr Barry Nevin

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GOVT GRABS COUNCIL DEVELOPMENT LEVIES FUNDS

Issued : Wednesday 24 June, 2009

Labour’s new Councillor on Wicklow County Council, Barry Nevin, has called on the Government to lift the ban it has placed on local authorities spending hundreds of millions of Euro of development levies that are languishing in their accounts.

I was shocked to hear that the Government has told Local Authorities that money collected in development levies before 2009 cannot be spent.  This money was accumulated by Councils during the boom times, and was earmarked for spending on specific local services associated with residential developments.

The Government wants to ensure that Council revenues which are counted as being part of government spending can be used to reduce the €25bn budgetary deficit.  This will be a huge blow to Wicklow County Council and indeed local communities will suffer because this money would have been spent on essential services such as clean water, proper lighting, parks and playgrounds and safe roads.  Once again ordinary householders are being forced to pay for the financial mismanagement of this Fianna Fail Government.

By preventing local Councils from spending this money the Government is effectively using locally generated money that was meant for local use, to put some kind of positive gloss on their exchequer finances.  If these hundreds of millions of Euro around the country were invested in local infrastructure projects, they would make a huge contribution to relieving the chronic unemployment that we now see in the construction sector by creating jobs in small construction companies.

As we all know Wicklow County Council is already starved of cash having had their funding cut back this year by the Green Minister for the Environment.  Now the money that the Council had put aside from development levies collected in Co. Wicklow won’t be used to improve services for local people.  This is truly shocking news and will have disastrous long-term consequences for every element of Council infrastructure from playgrounds to water sanitation.