Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn at Monday’s April meeting of Mayo County Council, during an item discussing the financial review of the first three months of the year, raised a number of issues that are of serious concern to him. Speaking in the council chamber he said: “The current capital expenditure is quite worrying, it’s about €5 million this year. Five years ago this would have been €40 million, this is a really serious issue. It also raises serious questions as to what are people doing [council staff]. We have also three town councils to take in and services are gone to the Road Safety Authority [RSA].”
The Westport based councillor also said he was worried about cash flow levels in the council, telling the meeting that the council came close not being able to pay its staff recently. “It says that it’s not so bad [referring to the financial report]. But we were only a couple of hours away from not being able to pay the employees a few weeks ago,” he told the meeting. Cllr Flynn also gave the example of a number of small businesses waiting months to get paid by the council, citing the example of one business which submitted an invoice in December, which was not processed until January and was not paid out until a few weeks ago, for €250.
