This is something the government's local democracy taskforce recommended in its report, published in March.
Fingal council executives should sit down in "workshops" with councillors and explain how and why they've allocated money across council services, before the councillors are asked to adopt a budget each November, councillors have said.
Fingal County Council's agreed revenue budget for this year – money for the council's day-to-day operations, from housing maintenance to street cleaning – was €433 million.
At the full monthly council meeting on Monday evening, Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly tabled a motion asking Chief Executive AnnMarie Farrelly to consider facilitating these workshops ahead of their next annual budget meeting, when they'll be asked to vote on the budget.
Because there is a lack of transparency in the council’s budget process, Donnelly said at the meeting. “This prevents any meaningful scrutiny or collaboration.”
Donnelly pointed to the March 2026 report from the government's Local Democracy Taskforce.
Councillors have significant formal powers in adopting their annual revenue budget, it says. But, “their ongoing role in monitoring financial performance is often underdeveloped”.
Councillors across Ireland find that the presentation of financial information in its current format can be complex and highly technical, it says.
Key insights can be hard to extract, it says. “This can hinder the councillor in performing his or her democratic role to oversee funding, expenditure and performance through the financial year.”
The taskforce’s report recommended that each council establish a finance committee – some, including Dublin City Council, already do, but not Fingal – among other steps to help councillors keep better watch of councils' spending.
Creating these finance committees will support effective oversight and decision-making, Donnelly said at the meeting. “And I think having budgetary workshops in the interim is the least we can do in the short term.”
The conversation at the meeting was focused on the revenue budget, over which councillors have a real say, not the "capital programme" – a separate, three-year budget for what the council will build.
The capital programme is set by council executives, who do not need councillors' approval of it – although the Local Democracy Taskforce report recommends greater oversight and input for councillors on this budget too.
It was unusual to be supporting a budgetary proposal from Sinn Féin, said independent Councillor Jimmy Guerin at the meeting.
“But I do because I think it’s very important for democracy, and I do because I think there’s nothing to be feared or wrong for a workshop or two workshops, and having a better input into the formation of the budget,” he said.
It could help councillors step into their budget meetings with a greater understanding of what they are trying to achieve, he said. “I find it hard to understand it from a briefing in the summer, where we don’t discuss it with our colleagues.”
Besides the county development plan, the budget is probably one of a councillor's most important functions, said Labour Councillor John Walsh.
“It is obviously a reserved function [of elected members], and yet, generally speaking the role of the councillor is, other than asking questions, is restricted to debating and ratifying the budget on the day,” he said.
Workshops would be a more open, more informal way of addressing the questions of councillors, he said. “It may be a way as well of filtering debate that would otherwise occur in the full budget meeting.”
Fine Gael Councillor Kieran Dennison said the Association of Irish Local Government and the Local Authorities Members' Association have provided a good deal of training for councillors on the budget process.
“My concept of a workshop is to help councillors deal with the budget and get their heads around it,” he said.
Farrelly, the council's chief executive, who was also a member of the Local Democracy Taskforce, said Fingal should be getting a finance committee in the fourth quarter of 2027.
She also wasn't clear on how councillors were defining workshops, she said.
The council already engages with councillors early about the budget, she said. “That’s why we offered meetings to everybody early in the summer so that, before we started preparing the budget, we could have an idea of what was important to all of you.”
Also, there's the question of fitting these workshops into the busy calendar, and what they would look at, she said. “That said, we’re a very big organisation so we appreciate that we should bring you information as much as you want it, I suppose.”
Nobody is asking for an education on how budgets work, Guerin said. “I’m looking for an input. That’s all that’s being sought.”
At the council’s last budget meeting in November 2025, the executive's proposed rent increase for tenants in social housing split the chamber. Labour Councillor John Walsh tabled a motion calling for the meeting to be adjourned.
A few workshops could have helped there, Guerin said. “Had we done it last year, we mightn’t have had the motion to adjourn.”
Donnelly said she wasn’t seeking general information on the local authority budget process either, she said. “I’m looking for information about Fingal’s budget process, Fingal’s.”
“The presentations that we get, they’re very top level,” she said. “The meetings that we have, they are for parties to say, ‘This is what our priorities are’. That’s not collaborative. That’s transactional.”
Donnelly’s motion was agreed.
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