Lord Mayor, there is a prophesy in this Council Chamber that in time, the only services Councillors will be able to provide in the future is a card game amongst the council itself. It is only a matter of time now when the card game will be a reality.

These cuts are a ‘disaster’ for the city going forward into the winter months.

I’m struck by the 200,000 taken away for those who need their bolier servied and general maintenance works.

Plus the e.365,000 taken out of actually marketing the city in its various guises; of all the aspects the city needs to do more is be competitive, attract more business and tourists in. We will be completely outcompeted without that armour on us.

Minister Hogan, who was bagged and gagged for a while, has wheeled himself back out, sending in a stealth missile to every local authority in the state.

Every body has their shoulder to the wheel and the Minister walks and instead of rewarding the efforts, he again cracks the whip. And that is the one thing that annoys me about this Minister, his lack of leadership in steering local authorities through this economic storm.

His handling of the household charge has resulted in blunders from the start. Poor communication is leading us all the rocks through this Minister.

It is not fair that blunders made at national level are affecting local services.

The Council cannot take the blame for a charge which was ill-considered and resulted in blunders. If this was a private enterprise the person making the blunder would have to pay for them – and in this case it is down to the Minister.

E. 1.2 million is a huge amount of money to cut. If the cuts started at the start of the year, you might be able to spread it over a 12 month period. But it is only now coming to our meeting, and it is going to be a disaster for the city.

There is too much slack to take up over the next three months.

Plus that’s not taking into account next year’s budget coming down the track.

There seems to be no long term thinking with regard to the provision of local government funding.

And the frightening thing is that there is probably worse to come. But of course, those bits of information will be force fed to us over the next two years, on a need to know basis.

Not only do we need to re-adjust here, we need to see where the next rocks are. We need to plan ahead over the next two years. We know there are more cuts coming. I want to see the 24 month plan.