Report Shows Council Improved Performance While Mounting COVID Response

South Dublin County Council improved its performance across a range of indicators during 2020, despite Covid-19 challenges and while providing additional innovations and services during the pandemic.

The NOAC Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2020 shows South Dublin County Council made advances last year, in particular in the areas of roads maintenance, social home reletting, citizen engagement and business support.

Covid-19 placed a considerable burden on the council, with a reduction in revenues and strained resources. However, essential services were delivered throughout the pandemic while South Dublin County Council played a vital role in the national response to Covid-19.  

South Dublin County Council established the Community Call service and provided support to more than 2,100 requests from people since March 2020.

The local authority also provided a range of new supports and grants to businesses, offered resilience and wellbeing supports to the community, and worked to facilitate changes to the public realm in the interests of public health and safety.

Alongside this, South Dublin County Council continued to deliver essential services throughout Covid, as the Performance Indicators Report 2020 shows.

• South Dublin County Council has the third-largest housing stock in the country after Dublin City and Cork City Council
• Over €2,800,000 was invested in works necessary to enable the reletting of homes with the time taken to re-let a home reducing by almost three weeks
• The number of rented dwelling inspections carried out by South Dublin County Council in 2020 was the highest of any local authority at 2,987 inspections
• The Local Enterprise Office (LEO) approved 610 trading online vouchers to support South Dublin County businesses to increase their online offering. The LEO also provided mentoring to 441 people or businesses.
• The Council investigated and closed almost 5,500 pollution cases
• A total of 13,721 LED lights were in operation in the public lighting system by the end of the year
• In 2020, almost €1,400,000 was invested in strengthening 8.2km of local roads
• South Dublin Libraries recorded over 50,000 registered members
• There were more than five million visits to council websites and our social media following increased by 22% to over 117,000 across all channels in 2020.

Commenting on the report, Lorna Maxwell, Director of Corporate Performance and Change Management at South Dublin County Council, paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of South Dublin County Council employees, saying:

“South Dublin County Council continued to provide hundreds of services throughout 2020, despite the challenge and uncertainty of Covid-19 and the constraints of public health restrictions. At the same time, we played a vital role in the national response to the pandemic, supporting communities, businesses and local economies.

“We are continually seeking to improve services and increase efficiency and did manage to make progress in a range of areas last year. Now that we are in a more certain situation with regard to Covid, we will build on our progress, continue to innovate and deliver quality public services.”