Cork County Council spent almost €12m on IT services over two years

CORK County Council spent almost €12m on IT-related services in a two-year period.

Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed the council spent around €6.1m in 2021 and €5.7m in 2022 on a range of IT-related services.

These include organisation revenue expenditure, which saw the majority of spend over the two years, as well as ICT expenditure on communications and consultancy, among other items.

In a statement to The Echo, a local authority spokesperson said: “The figures quoted are indicative of Cork County Council’s annual ICT revenue budget. The main areas of spend are on licensing, maintenance and support of the council’s Lan/Wan and applications, security and initiatives to drive digital-first services.”

The council’s IT expenditure in 2021 and 2022 was almost three times more than Cork City Council’s which spent about €1.9m on IT equipment and support in 2021, along with a further €2.6m in 2022. A council spokesperson said some of this expenditure went towards combating the threat of cyber-attacks.

Independent councillor Marcia D’Alton said €12m over two years is a very large sum of money. “Put in perspective, the €5.7m spend in 2022 is more than 1.7 times the spend on maintenance of burial grounds in that same year and just about the same as was spent on both litter management and street cleaning,” she said.

Ms D’Alton said that it is important to “not lose sight of the proportion of the annual revenue budget that is the IT spend” and noted the county council has a bigger jurisdictional area and a bigger revenue budget than city council.

“In 2022, the IT spend in the county was 1.5% of the overall revenue budget. In that same year in the city, the IT spend was 1.1% of the revenue budget,” he said.

“Proportionally, the difference was greater in 2021 [1.8% versus 0.8%], but still a more accurate comparator than simply the monetary figure.”