My Department provides funding to local authorities to assist them in the provision of Civil Defence services. This funding is intended to meet a proportion (70%) of the annual operating costs of Civil Defence in the local authorities - plus grants for equipment, training exercises and other miscellaneous costs.
The amount provided for Civil Defence in the Defence Vote for 2019 is €4.74m. This amount includes a once-off allocation of €0.5m from the Dormant Accounts Fund. The full-year Exchequer cost of increasing the budget for Civil Defence by 12.5%, excluding the Dormant Accounts allocation, would be €0.53m.