Fingal Councillors Pay and Expenses 2009 to 2014

Pay

Councillors get €16,000,a year. 1/2 year term mayors get an extra €16,000 and deputy mayors extra payment of €7,500. Councillors' 'base salary' stays the same – with four earning more than others - Fingal Independent.

Allowances

• an average 6,700 yearly expenses allowance.
• a €600 mobile phone allowance is also given.
• On top of these, there is also a tax-free allowance to attend council meetings and a tax-free conference budget of between €1,000 and €4,700 a year.
• Strategic Policy Committees (SPCs) also received a tax-free allowance of up to €6,000 per annum.
• €30.49 per month broadband

SPC
SPC's 500 per meeting and 6000?

Strategic Policy Committee chairpersons could lose €8k expenses if bid is success Independent.ie John MANNING 22/12/2010

County Council Tuesday, 21st December, 2010

Head of Corporate Affairs clarified that the payment to the Chairs of SPC’s was in fact a Statutory Payment and accordingly could not be altered.

Local Government & Elected Members Booklet - Part 3

Strategic Policy Committees (SPCs) Chairs’ Allowance
–
An allowance of up to €5,079 per annum may be paid to
councillors who chair Strategic Policy Committees (SPCs) in a
city/county council. The decision to pay an allowance and its
amount, subject to a maximum of €5,079 pa, is a matter for
determination by the members of the local authority.

allowances and benefits payable to councillors

Councillors who are chairs of strategic policy committees, SPCs, receive a tax-free allowance of approximately €5,079 per annum

S.I. No. 668/2006 - Local Government (Expenses of Local Authority Members) Regulations 2006 based LG 33/06 'Revised arrangements for Allowances for expenses incurred by elected members of local authorities' circular that I can't find online but referenced on the SIPOC website

An allegation of contravention report gives an example of the workings of the travel and subsistance expenses.

Some council members have much greater pay and allowances then others because of extra internal positions such as Mayor, Deputy, SPC chair, council representative on external boards some required some voluntary. The original sources and my charts try to reflect that.

I may be missing expenses for some other boards county development boards and vocational educational committees, regional assembly/authorities, EU regional authorities, and other health and social services related boards that some of Fingal councillors would have sat on during the 2009 - 2014 period.

I don't think councillors get paid too much and don't mind them getting expenses but conferences expenses must be truely useful to the councillor and the council.

I often am not impressed when newspapers lump years of expenses or pay into one amount to make it seem bigger, but then these charts do that, this is whole term wrap up, :/ the yearly data is available.



Rules
Can't find Fingal specific rules.

Councillors Pay 2008
Local Government Handbook


Sources
Councillor Payments and Expenses most up to date but in pdf format.
Fingal OpenData same as above in .csv format etc. Partly reason I did these charts is trying to find ways to use as much of the data as the Fingal open data staff provide, as possible.


Charts
Google spreadsheet with aggregated pay and expenses.

See Representative Payments for more notes on extra payments, inclues some councillors were elected to Dail at 2011 general election and those that replaced them. See complete list

See Allowances and Expenses for more notes on extra payments, inclues some councillors were elected to Dail at 2011 general election and those that replaced them. See complete list

Pay and expenses ordered by the amount of total money that is expenses. See Representative Payments and Expenses for more notes on extra payments, inclues some councillors were elected to Dail at 2011 general election and those that replaced them. See complete list


See Conferences and Training Courses for more notes on extra payments, inclues some councillors were elected to Dail at 2011 general election. See complete list

Working on second version of this conferences chart to show the extra positions that some councillors had.


Again see Conferences and Training Courses for more notes on extra payments. (No notes for 2013 yet)

Discussion on boards.ie where former councillor explains issues around conferences.

Working on an Exhibit of Fingal County councillors conferences 2009-2013, I would like to not just focus not on the stats, cost and distances, but I havn't found yet the reports from the conferences the councillors make to show what they learned at the conference. I found some lists of the conferences of which reports were made, but I haven't found any reports.

Irish Independent

The Irish Independent journalists Paul Melia and Shane Phelan investigated councillors expenses over the last two years,Revealed: the pay and perks of your local councillors in particular to add up up all the extra positions councillors hold.
Fingal Councillors expenses pdf. They list 2012 and 2013 figures and a total but don't detail what these figures are made of. They highlight the difficulty in finding and adding up all these payments. Majority of education boards refuse to reveal payments. The Independent highlighted the paltry reporting back from the conferences, Scribbled note from trip that cost taxpayer €724. They describe the gratuity/retirement payments that explain some of the high payments to some councillor payments.

I still haven't found the Fingal Council reports, I found this in 2011, County Council 11th April, 2011.

ORGANISATION AND PROCEDURE COMMITTEE 16th March 2011
PUBLISHING CONFERENCE REPORTS ON THE INTERNET.
The issue of publishing conference reports on the internet was raised by Councillor Cian O’Callaghan at the County Council meeting held on 13th September, 2010. It was agreed at that time that this matter would be discussed at a future Organisation and Procedures Committee Meeting.

Mr Stephen Peppard outlined the process regarding Councillors attending conferences and producing conference reports. Following a brief discussion it was agreed that a folder would be available at the County Council meeting each month containing conference reports.

I can find a monthly list of conferences attended and whether a reported was submitted or not like this 13th February, 2012 Conference Reports an example of something that was in practice before 2011, but I still haven't found the actual conference reports online, except for one on a delegation to China. More conference attendance reports.


Councillors and candidates offering monetary inducements to community groups. Please Stop