City Council boosts housing spend by €6m for 2019
Galway City Tribune - An additional €6 million has been allocated for housing by Galway City Council in its annual budget, in an attempt to tackle the city’s ever worsening housing crisis. This brings the total spend on housing and building to €27.1 million – some 31 per cent of the Local Authority’s €87.75 million budget for 2019.
At its budgetary meeting on Monday night, councillors signed off on a budget which will see €6.7 million spent on maintaining and improving the Council’s existing housing stock; €6.4 million on homeless services; €4.1 million on the housing capital programme; and €5.9 million on the Rental Assistance Scheme (RAS) – with grants, loans, allocations and transfers making up the rest.
Much of this outlay will be recouped through funds from central government – freeing up monies for a whole swathe of projects across the city’s three electoral wards.
Interim Head of Finance, Nepta Moggan, told councillors that commercial rates and Local Property Tax remain the Council’s biggest source of income.
“We have also saved money in certain areas, particularly on the early redemption of loans,” said Ms Moggan. “We were able to save money on that - €856,000.”
As well as housing, €17 million has been allocated for recreation and amenity; €13.6 million will go into roads; €11.68 million has been set aside for the Environment Department; while development management, taking in planning, will have a budget of just over €7 million. Parking is expected to generate a significant amount of extra income in 2019, following the installation of new meters across all City Council car parks. This is a preview only. For more a breakdown of the Council's 2019 budget spend, see this week's Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week's paper here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.
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