Tipperary council’s decision to give grant to financial institution branded ‘bizarre’
A decision by Tipperary County Council to award grant funding to a Credit Union has been branded “bizarre” by a local councillor.
At the November meeting of the Carrick-on-Suir Municipal District, Fianna Fáil councillor Kieran Bourke raised the question of the council giving a grant to the Credit Union in the town as part of the Painting Enhancement Scheme.
"It jumps off the page to me, why would we be giving assistance to a financial institution?” Cllr Bourke asked.
The Painting Enhancement Scheme is a programme offered by councils for businesses to paint their buildings, with a maximum of €500.
"I just find it bizarre because I know that smaller businesses are struggling, but these are financial institutions,” Cllr Bourke added.
In response, the Carrick-on-Suir district administrator Marie O’Gorman said that there had been a low uptake of applicants for the scheme, and the council didn’t want the money to go to waste.
"The Credit Union came into us and asked if we had any funds to support them, they actually wanted us to maintain planters outside their business, and we said no, but if you are enhancing the town, and you want to install planters – which they did – we can support it under Painting Enhancement,” councillors were told.
"I’d also note that we didn’t eliminate anyone else in order to support them, we didn’t have huge uptake, a lot of people struggled to get quotes in on time, this has gone out to November because we haven’t had people come in with quotes,” Ms O’Gorman added.
District director Brian Beck said it wouldn’t be usual for the council to give money to financial institutions.
"This would not be our normal practice to go out and support financial institutions, but it is our priority to support the town and enhance the town, when we get money allocated, it is about ensuring that money is spent within the town.
"There has been a huge amount of work trying to spend this money in the town, so we ended up in a situation whereby there was unspent money with nobody willing to take it up, so we had two choices – either hand the money back and it goes out of the town, or spend it in the town – and that is unfortunately the difficult situation that sometimes we end up in,” Mr Beck said.
"We made the decision that it’s better that this money is spent enhancing the town,” he added.