The Councils also need to provide justification and value for money on spending. They budget published by Kildare CC shows a spend of some €750,000 for parks cleaning and refuse collection….The largest park to me is around 10-20 acres, has about 5 bins which are always overflowing and never seem to be collected. If this is characteristic of all towns in the county how in the name can they be spending the money?

Certainly recommend this. It be a step in the right direction.

I wonder who’ll be liable to pay the penalties if they don’t keep budgets balanced. I’m guessing it won’t be deducted from their own salaries anyway!

Funny how in the last few days with some degree of entry back to the market, possible sale of government interest in aib , a good Christmas for the domestic economy the troika decide to speak out . Confidence seemed to be lifting slightly. The eu presidency and kenny in my opinion seeming to perform well in Europe we get kicked back into our box. The economist prints an editorial recommeding help for ireland. we meet the vast majority of targets set for us. We dont do a greece and have debt write off and second bailout.Then Just in case you think of asking for a deal on bank debt remember you are still bad boys and girls…time will pass and eventually we will get out of this but we need to never forget this …remember we held a grudge and contempt for the Brits for 800 years time to swap the contempt

The degree of intrusion into how we run our country is staggering. Humiliating. And 21% of you would vote the party that invited this on us back into power.

The European Commission in principal recommending our councils to balance their books is not unreasonable ,we do owe the troika a lot of money.but if a european policy of fines is created as a result of the councils inability to reform their services then we should be very worried and at all costs easiest this.this would be the equivalent of a money lender calling to your door and saying he wants two grand next week because HE didn’t come get his 500 last week,does that make sense,Europe must understand that the Irish as citizens cannot be expected to pay huge daily fines because of the incompetence of our leaders,in Ireland we have no control of services like councils or hospitals or transport because our leaders ,or management have their positions cemented in place with a system of no responsibility which has been created under the watchful eye of Europe.the European Commission has failed the Irish people in allowing our very intelligent population be gradually disenfranchised by a long established fraternity of characters that would make George Orwells pigs look good.( maybe that’s harsh ,but those pigs were organized!!) So Europe ,if the services that we pay for don’t deliver in terms of value for money ,then the councils will be fined alright,but they’ll be fined by us the people or not at all.

Great idea on paper, but its going to cost more to merge than the savings will generate.

Another FG/Labour spend a million to save 50,000

I wonder if they are telling the Commission that they are increasing the number of Councillors in Dublin by 50…..

Looks like a deal on bank debt is off the cards.

Altho i dont like the way the troika are poking their nose in almost everything in every article on journal today

I do agree with them on this we should be running balanced budgets at council level its just a shame it takes a boom and bust and a a bailout for the country to be spoon fed basics like this why could t this be all done 2000-2008

Yes master ! Lets tip our hats to the European gentry.