On Mon 25th November Dublin City Councillors will meet at City Hall to try to agree a budget for 2020.
Dublin City Council’s Chief Executive has forewarned City Councillors that this will be a difficult budget:
“Despite a relatively benign economic environment, the City Council faces difficult challenges in preparing a balanced Budget for 2020. Significant additional income must be raised if services are to be maintained. The draft Budget points to a Local Government funding system that does not provide the required financial resources to sustain Dublin City Council services.”
The budget presents very worrying concerns for Dublin, its citizens and its businesses. It confirms that the Local Government funding model has consistently shifted in recent years and has been disadvantageous to Dublin City Council.
Dublin City Rate Payers and communities should not have to pay for the Fine Gael Governments absence of understanding of the funding challenges facing Dublin City and their consequent failure to fund local Government.
Rates
Despite Government committing that the transition to Irish Water would be revenue neutral, the Government has informed Dublin City Council that it will take Irish Water related rates income of €8.4m from its Budget in 2020 and every subsequent year.
Local Property Tax
Dublin City homeowners pay €80m a year in LPT but Dublin City Council typically receives only €4m. €16m is distributed to other counties and the remaining €60m is used to fund central government programmes. Dublin Homeowners are in effect subsidising National Government spending.
Housing
Dublin City Council and the Government have agreed targets to refurbish vacant housing units to a high standard and re-let them. There is a significant cost associated with achieving current building standards, yet the government only contributes 45% of the cost that DCC incurs to upgrade and refurbish these units.
To achieve a balanced budget, DCC Chief Executive is proposing increases in business rates, DCC residential tenants’ rents, toll charges and parking charges together with cuts to community funding.
In the interest of fairness and to alleviate the funding shortfall, the Dublin Agreement Councillors are calling on the Taoiseach, Ministers for Finance and Housing, Environment and Local Government to:
- reverse the decision to take €8.4m in Irish Water related rates
- fully fund the vacant residential refurbishments
The full Dublin City Council Budget 2020, including the Chief Executives introduction can be read HERE.