Longford County Council splurges €2.3m on ‘experts’

Longford County Council has splashed out over €2.3m in fees to consultants between January 2018 and June this year while taking in €1.8m in car parking charges, it has emerged.

The figures are, for the first time revealed, in a series of Freedom of Information requests which detail the vast amounts of public monies that have been paid out to external experts for various infrastructural projects locally.

Among that figure includes €946,000 for legal expenses, €415,000 in agency fees and a futher €102,000 accrued under technical support costs.

The Leader can also reveal how the council have taken in €1.8m in car parking charges across the same two and a half year period, culminating in 2,164 fines being handed out.

Cathaoirleach of Longford County Council Cllr Paul Ross said despite terming the high consultancy costs a “necessary evil” it was imperative the wider Longford public “see value for taxpayers money”.

Cllr Gerry Warnock was even more circumspect and questioned why such exorbitant sums of money were being spent externally when the council already had experienced personnel of its own.

“For years now I’ve been a constant critic on how much we as a local authority are paying to private consultancies for a suite of services that I truly believe is largely unnecessary, as we already have the expertise in-house to deal with many of these scenarios,” he said.

“Most local authorities have highly qualified professional people on their payroll, so engaging external agencies, in many instances, is completely inefficient and unnecessary and puts needless delays on actually getting shovels in the ground and bringing these projects to fruition.”