Cork City Council calls for budget intervention to avoid commercial rates hike

A €3m deficit in Cork City Council’s budget for 2025 will not be overcome without senior Government intervention, councillors have suggested.

In a motion calling for increase baseline funding for the city council, Fine Gael’s Shane O’Callaghan raised a possible rates increase for city traders which has been proposed as part of budget discussions, saying: “I’d be totally opposed.”

“At a time when businesses are facing rising costs already, businesses are just hanging on and to ask them to pick up a tab of €3m is unacceptable,” he said.

Unacceptable

“But cuts to services is also unacceptable, and I’m told that’s the alternative — [Housing] Minister Darragh O’Brien needs to look at LPT [Local Property Tax] baseline funding again.”

He said that index-linked money paid by Cork City Council to Cork County Council since the boundary extension is adding to the deficit, but this has not been accounted for by the Government when allocating funding.

His motion proposed that: “Cork City Council again write to the minister for housing, local government and heritage, Darragh O’Brien, urging him to reconsider his decision to only allocate an extra €1.5m in Local Property Tax baseline funding to Cork City Council,” citing extenuating circumstances, which should entitle the council to more funding.

Mr O’Callaghan mentioned that Mr O’Brien previously referred him to a committee that didn’t exist anymore, saying: “It’s the equivalent of us all banging our heads against a brick wall.”

Tánaiste

He proposed an amendment to his own motion to instead write to Tánaiste Micheál Martin, calling on him to intervene and urge his party colleague to provide more funding, saying: “As a proud son of Cork, the Tánaiste may help us in this regard.”

Fianna Fáil councillor Seán Martin, brother of the Tánaiste, said that Mr O’Callaghan was collating two different issues.

He said the deficit “has nothing to do with what we’re paying out to the county council”.

He reminded Mr O’Callaghan that he himself had voted against index linking of the money, saying: “This nitpicking and deriding Minister O’Brien is nonsense.”

“He didn’t sign over the programme, it was signed over by a Labour and Fine Gael government.”

Afford

Councillor Brian McCarthy added that, though he had no amendment for the motion, any rates increases could be done in such a way that larger businesses which could afford it paid more, while smaller businesses were not affected, “so it would not lead to any businesses closing down”, rather than a blanket increase.

He added he was in favour of additional funding, as currently “we do not have the funding to run this city properly”.

Social Democrats councillor Padraig Rice proposed a special meeting on rates increases so that they can be balanced according to the size of the business and their ability to pay additional money.

Councillor Joe Lynch said that referring to the Tánaiste “strikes me as a sensible proposition”.

“There’s not going to be a solution found here until there is political intervention,” he said.

However, Mr O’Callaghan decided to scrap the amendment calling on the Tánaiste to intervene and instead refer just to Mr O’Brien following Mr Martin’s feedback.

The motion was agreed on by all but Mr McCarthy.