COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, April 14, 2025

QUESTION NO. 23

QUESTION: Councillor J. Sinnott

To ask the Chief Executive to outline what steps are taken by South Dublin County Council to ensure appropriate governance and oversight is undertaken in Community Centres across the county?

REPLY:

The council’s community centres are managed by independent management committees, set up to manage each respective community centre under licence issued from the council. The management committees are set up and established as Companies limited Guarantee (CLG) and as such must comply with governance measures as per CRO regulations such as the holding of AGMs and the submission of annual financial accounts.The management licence issued also states that the council has the right to nominate up to a maximum of two local authority staff onto the boards of each management company. A number of centre management committees are also registered charities and in that case they must also satisfy the charity regulator on an annual basis that they have governance policies and procedures in place.

A recent review of our community development services identified the need for a revised approach to supporting boards of management in community facilities.As a result of this the community facilities support team tendered for the provision of governance training for community centres and training has been provided by Governance Ireland in the following areas:

1. Governance
2. Human Resources
3. Financial Management
4. Strategic Planning
5. Becoming a Registered Charity

Funding under the Management Support Fund is only available to community centres who have completed this governance training and only one community centre has yet to complete training.Within the Community Infrastructure Fund, guidelines are also provided to applicants, outlining governing documentation that is required in order for applications to be eligible, thus ensuring good governance is applied. We are currently working on the roll out of the next training programme that will be made available to community centre directors in quarter three of 2025.

We are also currently involved in establishing as a pilot project, a new regional management committee set up as a CLG to manage a cluster of initially three community centres in the North Clondalkin area. The new regional management committee will be tasked with the responsibility for overall management and governance of the three facilities under a management licence from the council. This pilot model will be reviewed and should it be deemed to work successfully, it may lead to the establishment of further regional models to manage other community centres across the county.