Councils graded on transparency
Cork County Council has said it is concerned about the way a recent report was put together which ranked the local authority in 18th place for transparency, accountability and ethics.
Transparency International Ireland (TII) released its National Integrity Index report on Monday which also ranked Cork City Council in the same position.
Fingal County Council and South Dublin County Council received the highest ranking of 31 local authorities while Kerry County Council and Westmeath County Council were considered to be the worst performing on the National Integrity Index.
Cork County Council issued a statement about its ranking which said it was concerned about the way the report was compiled as it could give an inaccurate impression that the council is not meeting its statutory obligations.
The statement said: “This ranking is based on an assessment against a set of 30 indicators, not all of which are statutorily required. Where indicators are statutorily required, Cork County Council complies fully. The TII ranking is assessed from the data available on the council’s websites as well as by direct contact through freedom of information requests, emails and phone calls.
“TII have no statutory basis or function in overseeing any aspect of local authority business. It is a voluntarily established group and local government in Ireland does not recognise TII as having any status in overseeing the statutory based governance arrangements for local government in Ireland.”
Cork County Council said it is highly accountable to its citizens, to its elected members and to central government and that its actions, decisions and finances are fully transparent.
“Council employees operate with utmost integrity in the delivery of hundreds of services to the public,” said the statement.
It added: “The National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC) is the statutory body overseeing the local government sector, scrutinising performance against pre-determined indicators for customer service and financial performance every year.
“NOAC provide an independent mechanism to monitor and evaluate performance and publish reports annually. In addition to NOAC, Cork County Council is also subject to the governance and scrutiny of an internal auditor, the local government auditor and an independently chaired audit committee,” the statement concluded.