People given grant of €300k to use as they see fit in their area

By Brendan Grehan

LUCAN, ADAMSTOWN and Palmerstown have been allocated €300,000 by South Dublin County Council under the new participatory budget scheme. The scheme was launched on Tuesday night by the Mayor, Councillor Guss O’Connell in the Clarion Hotel. Lucan was selected randomly to take part in the scheme.

Participatory Budgeting is an innovative democratic process which facilitates citizens in a local community to directly decide how to spend a portion of a public budget in their area. It gives people direct power to determine spending priorities to improve their community.

Residents, through a combination of locally facilitated workshops and an online consultation, are invited to submit their spending priorities for this budget.

Mayor O’Connell told The Echo: “Participatory budgeting is about enabling people to have a greater voice on local priorities.
“We want to give local people the opportunity to vote on investment in their area, to shape the services they use and address the issues that are important to them in their community”.

Mayor O’Connell said he would like to encourage all citizens to get involved by submitting their ideas or voting for projects.

Throughout March the initiative will be widely publicised on local and social media. Workshops will be held on Tuesday March 7 in Adamstown at St. John the Evangelist School at 7pm, Monday, March 13 at 7pm in Lucan Leisure Centre and on Wednesday, March 15 in Palmerstown Community School at 6.30pm.

The Chief Executive of SDCC, Daniel McLoughlin told The Echo: “This initiative builds on our already significant programme of citizen engagement. We are anxious to explore this process which has been used elsewhere across the world in the interests of local democracy.

“While each area implements the concept differently, the fundamental rationale and basic process is the same: community members come together to brainstorm ideas, proposals are shortlisted, residents vote for their priorities and the local authority implements the projects chosen by the community”.

In early April 2017 proposals having been assessed and selected will be costed and put forward for a public vote. This vote can be submitted online through the website.

“There will also be a number of voting stations set up locally for people to vote in paper format, if they do not have access to the internet/computer.

“These locations and the date to cast your vote will be announced closer to the time.