Outspoken Kilkenny Fianna Fail deputy John McGuinness has said that he is in agreement with the centralisation of the local authorities of Carlow Kilkenny.
Speaking in the wake of the publication of the An Bord Snip Nua report yesterday he said that he agreed with the concept of the centralisation of the administration of Carlow Kilkenny local authorities which he believes would cut down on administrative costs to the government.
The contents of the An Bord Snip Nua report which details the cutbacks that the country will be forced to accept over the coming years, is a necessary evil according to Deputy McGuinness.
He said that the report was in line with what he expected and he added that the country is in clear difficulty with the government borrowing €13 million a day to run the public sector alone.
Regarding the merging of the local authorities in Carlow and Kilkenny, Deputy McGuinness said that this was not necessarily worrying.
“Administrative costs could be cut back - there are only 4.5 million people in this country and we have an abundance of councils. This is duplication of effort.
“If we amalgamated the local authorities we would have a more streamlined and cost-effective effort. I have supported this motion since I was a member of Kilkenny County Council as I think there is big savings to be made.
“Look at Kilkenny where we have a housing department in both Kilkenny borough and county councils, the same with roads and planning - there is no need for this - we are a small county.
“We need to look at re-structuring the political system also seeing if there is a need for the number of Ministers, TDs, the Senate and the number of county councils,” he said.
Speaking about cuts to the public sector Deputy McGuinness said, “anyone involved in politics can see that we are in serious difficulty. I advised these cuts last September and now they are going to have to happen. We need to be running our government and our pubic sector more efficiently. There needs to be cuts but they need to be prioritised properly insofar as they need to look at cuts in top management and middle management first before they start cutting the less well off and the marginalised.
“The social welfare system will also be affected but I would hope that this would be the last area that would be touched. There is clear need for reform and in better times you can afford inefficiencies but not now. These cutbacks are not optional - they are a necessity. This report will be the basis for public debate which is badly needed and it will provide an insight into the country’s financial situation for one and all.”
Deputy McGuinness also pointed out that this report would challenge the government and it would become clear as to whether or not the government was up to doing the job.
“The country has to come first and we need to protect the vulnerable and less well off and limit the impact of this report on them. But there are 20 thousand people employed in the public sector in departments where they are not needed. These need to be deployed to other departments where the workload has increased such as the social welfare and enterprise departments. There is need for radical change and I hope people have enough common sense to understand the changes.”
Deputy McGuinness agreed that it may not be possible to protect the vulnerable completely from the implications of the report but he said that he hoped that some of the cutbacks in non-essential areas would be made first and that social welfare and pensions would not be affected unless absolutely necessary.
He said that a centralised procurement department would incur immediate savings and he also pointed to savings that could be had in not translating documents into Irish unnecessarily. He advised good human resource management and the redeployment of staff.
“We can’t avoid the pain laid out in the An Bord Snip Nua Report - the report is essential and it could save the country,” he concluded.
