Cork City Council catering bill tops €121k since 2022

A total of €121,314 has been spent by Cork City Council on catering from the start of 2022 to the end of May of this year.

Figures revealed the The Echo under the Freedom of Information Act show that the amount spent almost doubled between 2022 and 2023 and is on track to increase by another third in 2024.

A Cork City Council spokesperson said: “Catering services are provided by contracted catering companies and not by city council staff.

“The services range from catering for civic events, receptions, launches, meetings, conferences, etc. The events vary hugely in terms of scale and the events catered for are generally on campus, but on occasion were functions off-site.”

Catering costs were just over €30,490 in 2022, with over half of this money spent in May, December, and November, when €4,628, €6,574, and €9,922 were spent.

Just €75.60 was spent in January and €96.62 in February, with between €750 and €1,650 spent the other months of the year. The council explained: “Some figures include the cost for labour, equipment rental and disposal costs.”

In 2023, the total figure almost doubled to €58,318, with an average cost of €4,859 a month compared to €2,541 the previous year — the council explained that a new structure of charges was introduced in 2023 to reflect inflationary pressures.

Some €904 was spent in January 2023, €1,320 in July 2023, and €1,961 in March 2023 — all other months catering was between €2,859 and €6,702 aside from in February when it was €11,105.

Cork City Council noted that February 2023’s figure includes conference catering costs — the figure is the second-highest monthly total from the 29-month period covered under the FOI aside from May 2024, the most recent month, when €13,516 was spent.

Spend has been higher in general for 2024 — a total of €32,501 was spent this year, up to the end of May, an increase of just under €10,000 from the same time in 2022 when €22,256 was spent, and over four times as much as in 2022 when €7,182 was spent by May.

The average cost of catering per month in 2024 is just over €6,500, considerably above the €4,859 average in 2023 and the €2,541 in 2022.

A spokesperson for Cork City Council told The Echo: “Catering is supplied on request and charged per the prices submitted on successful tenders. Costs may increase or decrease, depending on in-house requests for catering.

“Costs did increase when a new structure of charges was introduced in 2023, reflecting inflationary pressures and the then-evolving cost-of-living crisis.”