At a meeting of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council on Monday last, councillors supported motions from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to pass on a full 15% reduction the rate of Local Property Tax to be charged to local residents for 2024. The measure was carried by a vote of 29-9.
Councillors from the Social Democrats, Green Party and the Labour Party supported first a proposal to have a formal zero percent reduction in LPT but with a rebate scheme for those meeting certain criteria on income and applicable to house prices under €700,000 but this was defeated in a vote.
Cllr. John Kennedy (Fine Gael), who was one of the signatories of the motion to pass on a full 15% reduction, commented: “My own ward of Stillorgan has homes with house prices at the very highest end of the national spectrum where many three-bed semi-detached houses are above €700,000 in value. With cost-of-living pressures evident, the reduction of 15% will provide some relief, bearing in mind that interest rate rises may burden those with higher mortgage repayments in the year ahead.”
Cllr. Kennedy continued: “A case was made that not passing on a reduction would have potentially supported funding for more climate action projects, yet for such schemes as Active Travel, the onus for such funding ought to be primarily from central Government as it has been in the recent past as well as from the EU where the Multi-Annual Financial Framework provides a generous level of supports for local authorities to ultimately draw support from.”
Cllr. Kennedy concluded: “The healthy state of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council finances after Budget 2023 has shown strong recovery since the worst effects of the pandemic timeframe during which a majority of councillors (unlike Fine Gael councillors) voted in one year of the Covid crisis previously to not pass on a full reduction. As such, the justification for residents to in effect pay an increased level of LPT in real terms would have been weak for the year ahead.”
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