Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 11 May 2023
216. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the estimated cost in a full year of the 541 full-time equivalents staff in local authority planning departments, as set out in the Business Case for Resources for the Planning Function of Local Authorities completed in Q2 2022. [22280/23]
View answerThe Business Case for Resources for the Planning Function of Local Authorities, as referred to, was completed by the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) in 2022 and identified a shortfall of 541 staff in the local authority planning service at that time. The report estimated that across the 31 local authorities, the cost (including an overhead for office accommodation and related costs etc.) of employing the additional staff identified would be of the order of €40 million per annum. This is based on the salaries as calculated at the mid-point of the respective pay scales for the grades concerned.
It is worth noting that the funding system for local authorities is complex, with authorities deriving their income from a variety of sources including local sources such as commercial rates, charges for goods and services and funding from Central Government.
Financial decision-making and the accountability of local authorities is a matter for the elected members of a local authority who have direct responsibility in law for all reserved functions of the authority, which includes adopting the annual budget. Section 103 of the Local Government Act, 2001, as amended, provides for the local authority budgetary process. It should be noted that it is a matter for each local authority to determine its own spending priorities in the context of the annual budgetary process, having regard to both locally identified needs and available resources.
Further to the submission of the LGMA report, my Department is working with the LGMA on a programme of support for building planning capacity and capability in order that planning authorities will have the requisite level of staffing resources and expertise to efficiently and effectively perform their planning functions.
