Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Galway City Council has set aside €880,000 in next year’s budget to cover the first repayments of a 30-year loan drawn down to buy offices at Crown Square and relocate City Hall from College Road to Mervue.

The ruling pact on the Council (including Fine Gael, Green, Labour and some Independent councillors) approved the budgetary measure without much fuss at their budget meeting in November. Councillors outside the pact (Fianna Fáil, Social Democrat and Independents) backed it too.

They could have chosen to use the money instead to hire more Council workers, who would have improved the services the public received next year.

Some €880,000 would allow 70 additional staff members to be hired; or it could have been used for so many other worthwhile projects in communities across the city.

But instead, it will be used to repay debt, to make good the decision city councillors made earlier this year to approve an application for a loan from the Housing Finance Agency.

As has been reported on several occasions in this newspaper (but worryingly not in other media outlets), councillors voted this summer to apply for a loan of €45.5 million to help buy an office block in Mervue to relocate City Hall.

The cost of the deal – to move from College Road and fit out the new building – is €56.5m.

As well as the €45.5 million loan, some €11m from the City Council’s own resources need to be found to fund the property deal.

In 2023, the loan repayment is just €880,000 but that will jump to €2 million in subsequent years.

That’s around €2m for 30 years at an interest rate of 2.25%, amounting to a €17.6m repayment cost on top of the amount borrowed. So, the true cost of the loan itself would be €63.1 million.

It means that every year for the next 29 years, city councillors are going to have to find €2m in their budget to fund this move, a move that up until July nobody seemed to know anything about and that the public and ratepayers had not sought.

They will fund it by cutting back on other services, by not recruiting more staff, or not investing in useful projects and infrastructure important to the people in communities they are elected to serve.

Is there anyone brave enough to call a halt to this vanity project, before it’s too late?

(Photo: Every year for the next 29 years, city councillors are going to have to find €2m in their budget to fund cost of moving City Hall from College Road to Crown Square. a move that’s being led by City Executive Brendan McGrath).
This is a shortened preview version of this column. For more Bradley Bytes, see the December 9 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.