Funds for community groups under spotlight
There was great opposition to two similar motions during a recent Cork City Council meeting which called for changes to the way ward funds are distributed.
Councillors each have €11,000 to give to community groups every year in their local area and up to €500 can be given to their chosen groups or organisations.
The first motion was proposed by Green Party Cllr Oliver Moran who wanted to relax the rules and allow individual councillors to return a portion of their allocated ward funds to supplement the city wide budget for the arts, sports and placemaking in light of Covid-19. His partymate Cllr Lorna Bogue supported him by saying that the motion was just asking for some wriggle room.
The motion didn’t go down well with other councillors and Cllr Moran was forced to withdraw the motion after a debate was held on it.
The second motion came from Independent Cllr Thomas Moloney who urged elected members to voluntarily take a cut to their ward funds by 30 per cent.
He explained: “Ward funds are €11,000 therefore I would like Cork City Council to take 30 per cent - €3,300. “If all 31 councillors did so €102,300 would be saved by the council which could go towards badly needed planned housing maintenance, it would cover the full cuts to the fire service and I’m sure there are a lot more other projects that could be looked at. I accept that some councillors will have already allocated this year’s ward funds, if so maybe they would be willing to make this gesture from next year’s allocation.”
However this was also shot down by a large number of councillors and a vote was taken. The motion failed to get the green light with 24 voting against it and five in favour of it.
During the debate about ward funds, Fianna Fáil Cllr Terry Shannon said: “You should be careful what you wish for,” adding that if a community group needed more than a councillor’s discretionary budget of €500 then several councillors in the area could come together give €500 each which in some cases would mean €3,000 for a community group.
Fine Gael Cllr Shane O’Callaghan said in the overall scheme of things it was a tiny amount of money. He added: “There’s a lot of community groups who have had their funding dramatically cut. Councillors are aware of what’s happening on the ground in their local area and these cuts. Cut our ward funds which help these groups? Absolutely not!”