Impact of Covid Restrictions on City Council services

This afternoon, I was informed by the Chief Executive of Dublin City Council about how the introduction of Level 5 restrictions is impacting upon the delivery of services across the city.

The City Council’s Senior Management Team has considered the implications for City Council services of the Government’s decision to impose Level 5+ restrictions. The following are the key changes:

• Construction projects and activities across all service areas will cease from 18.00hrs on Friday 8 January, with the following limited exceptions:

• social housing projects, including voids, designated as essential sites by the City Council and subject to certain conditions,
• housing adaptation grant works where the homeowner is agreeable to the works being undertaken in their home,
• essential/emergency housing maintenance and repair services,
• critical maintenance and repair, and winter maintenance of roads infrastructure and
• repair, maintenance and construction of critical transport and water infrastructure projects, including cycling and walking projects.

• Rental inspections, house visits, and other non-statutory calls will take place only on an emergency basis.

• All City Council offices will remain closed with very limited public access, strictly by prior appointment.

• No organised indoor or outdoor gatherings can take place. All meetings are to be held remotely.

• No outdoor or indoor exercise group activities will take place.

• Libraries and cultural services will operate online services only.

• The following facilities remain closed to the public:

• Libraries and cultural facilities,
• Sports, Leisure and Community Centres and
• City Hall (apart from weddings with a maximum of 6 guests)

All other services will continue to operate as at present.

Where practicable and effective to do so, all work must be now carried out remotely. This will require a further reduction in the number of staff working in the Civic Offices.

The Chief Executive advised to me to take particular note of the very significant increase in the number of City Council staff unavailable for work due to COVID related reasons over the past 5 weeks. Indeed of just under 1,000 staff members have been unavailable for work, for COVID related reasons, at some stage since the pandemic began around 400 have been unavailable for a period since 1 December 2020. Apart from the direct impact of COVID restrictions on services, the increase in staff unavailability is also having an impact on service levels.

Every effort will be made to maintain services to the greatest possible extent subject to full compliance with the COVID restrictions and the impact of COVID on staff availability.