Dublin City Budget – Senator Mary Fitzpatrick

At the Dublin City Council meeting dealing with the 2012 Estimates I made the following statement as leader of the Fianna Fail Group.

Fianna Fail group believes it would be irresponsible of us to vote for these estimates:

1. We are not opposed to the principle of competition for the bin service however we believe it is premature to privatise the domestic bin collections prior to legislation to facilitate the regulation of domestic waste collection in the city.

2. We don’t know what provision, if any, is made for the more than 40,000 households on a waiver.

3. No provision is made for an increase in illegal dumping which is already costing the city €300k per year.

4. We can’t understand why the Labour and Fine Geal Councillors would not wait for their own government colleagues to legislate for the regulation of a privatised bin service before voting to out-source the service.

5. In simplest terms Dublin City Council is giving away €22m in revenue, retaining €13m of costs.

We are disappointed that Labour and Fine Geal don’t do more for the city and use their combined power at local and national government to make real adjustments to the following issues:

1. Amend current rates legislation to insure that National Govt pays rates and local authorities are given independent revenue raising facilities.

2. Amend the development levies legislation to allow Dublin City Council refund the more than €3m in levies paid by homeowners and business in the City for Metro North

The proposed VAT increase of 2% from the government is going to bust household budgets, kill retail activity, drive unemployment and force businesses to close – this combined with the paltry reduction in rates is going to close the city.

We are concerned that the call-out charge for the fireservice is not going to save one cent but it could cost lives. For these and other reasons, which does not permit me now to mention, we will vote against these estimates.

Mary.