Councillors defend use of expenses on college courses

TWO
Southside public representatives have defended the use of council expenses to
fund their participation in third level courses.

Last
year Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council paid councillors Barry Ward (FG) and
Cormac Devlin (FF) e10,085 and e2,780 respectively towards third-level college
courses.

Cllr
Devlin was paid e2,780 last year and has received e9,200 in total since 2007,
for his four-year course in public management at the Institute of Public
Administration in Ballsbridge.

Cllr
Ward received e10,085 last year to cover half the cost of a two-year long
Masters in Economic Policy Studies at Trinity College Dublin.

The
fees are being paid to councillors from an annual council fund of e131,000,
which has more traditionally been used to reimburse elected members for
expenses they have incurred while attending conferences and training courses.

If
some councillors do not spend their full allocation of e4,700 in any given
year, the council can reallocate some of the surplus left over to other
councillors who may then spend in excess of their individual limits.

Last
week, Cllr Melisa Halpin (PBP) pointed out that her party had consistently
opposed the expenditure of e131,000 per annum by the council on conferences,
training and what she described as

“junkets

?.

She
claimed that she and the only other PBP councillor on the local authority, Cllr
Hugh Lewis, had

“as a matter of principle

? refused to claim any expenses for
conferences or training since they were elected in 2009.

“This
scandal of conference expenses has gone on far too long,

? Cllr Halpin said.

“Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is not able to afford some of the basic
services and yet every year e131,000 is being spent on sending councillors on
junkets.

?

She
further criticised the use of council expenses to fund the courses taken by
Cllrs Ward and Devlin.

However,
Cllr Ward was keen to point out that the county manager had approved the
spending on his third level course. He also stressed that the course at TCD
bore no relevance to his full-time career as a criminal barrister.

“I
looked around for a course that would give me the skills required to make
properly informed decisions on the annual budget and to analyse the effects of
various charges on our local economy,

? he said.

“Any
ancillary costs associated with the course, including taking time off work, are
borne by me and the course does not relate to any work I do outside the
political sphere. Hence, there is no personal benefit to me. In fact, more than
half the cost of the course will be borne by me personally.

?

Cllr
Devlin also said that the course he is studying would help him in his role as a
councillor.

He
insisted that it would not benefit him personally.

“The
degree is a relevant degree [to working as a councillor],

? he said.

“It is in
public management, so therefore it deals with local authority governance and it
is to assist me in my role as a public representative. It has very little use
outside of public politics unless I was in the civil service, which I am not.

?

He
added:

“Local government reforms in 2010 actually encourage councillors to
upskill and to learn more, not only about their own roles but also the roles of
local authorities and to ensure that officials and representatives are well
informed of the issues.

?

A
spokeswoman for the council said the county manager had approved the

“recoupment

? of the expenditure by the two councillors in question, on the
basis that it involved no additional expenditure by the local authority.

“The
expenditure represented an investment in structured education and training in
areas of relevance to Local Government and that is consistent with guidelines
issued by the Department of the Environment,

? she said.

“It was and remains the
view of the manager that expenditure on education and training for councillors
offers greater added value to the local authority than the alternative, which
is expenditure on the attendance by councillors at one-off conferences.

?