“Libraries around the county will not be able to buy any more new books or daily newspapers later this year due to funding cuts,” according to Labour councillor Harry Barrett.
Cllr Barrett met with library staff who pointed out that a 40 per cent cut in overall book grants for Mayo libraries from €390,000 to €290,000 will mean that their new-book purchases will have to be suspended soon due a shortage of funds. The library’s new-book budget had already been cut by almost 20 per cent at the start of 2009.
The councillor said: “This is a shockingly backward cut in funding. If ever we needed our libraries it is now. I have seen first hand that Castlebar Library has become much busier in recent months, and it is always the case that libraries always have during a recession. Cutting funding will dismantle all of the work done in the last few years by the excellent staff of Castlebar County Library, and will bring us back to the 1980s”.
The Castlebar town councillor added: “Even more alarming and regressive is the fact that libraries have also lost book funding in a grant from the Department of Education for primary school books and my fear now that is once the Local Elections are over, libraries will be targeted and will have even deeper cuts to their already shrinking budgets.”
