Last night, 28th November 2024, we passed the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Budget for 2025. There were changes proposed that would have tackled vacancy in our towns & villages, improve footpaths and accessibility, maintain our playgrounds and more. Unfortunately, these proposals were all rejected by a majority of councillors – Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and independents voting against all proposals.
Services rejected by the big parties
Read below how the following proposals from our 6 Green Party councillors were voted against by a coalition of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents.
| Amount | Services for our community | Proposed by | Voted against by |
| €33,000 | Tree care: community tree planting, tree pruning | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €33,000 | Playground maintenance | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €33,000 | Retrofitting council housing | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €300,000 | Local road maintenance including footpath repairs, accessibility works (e.g. dishing footpath crossings) and cycleway maintenance | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €100,000 | Traffic calming and road safety in estates and residential roads | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €50,000 | Local roads winter maintenance | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €70,000 | New bins including dog poo bins | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €50,000 | Beaches – new accessibility ramp at Seapoint | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €50,000 | Housing maintenance | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
| €50,000 | Street cleaning and gully clearing | Green Party Councillors | Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and most independents |
The funding sources for these proposals was:
- Change the Fine Gael proposal to increase commercial rates by 2%, to instead increase by 2.2%. A 2% increase for businesses was considered fine by Fine Gael & Fianna Fáil councillors, but 2.2% to fund essential services for our community – they thought this was too much.
- Remove the subsidy for owners of vacant commercial properties. Fine Gael & Fianna Fáil voted to keep subsidising vacant commercial property owners instead of funding the above essential services.
- Adjust the projection for parking income. Last year, council management under-estimated parking income by 5%. It’s not transparent how that 5% of additional parking income ended up being spent by management. For Budget 2025, we proposed to increase the projection by 5% this year so that it wouldn’t again be under-estimated. Fine Gael & Fianna Fáil were happy to allow management to underestimate parking income instead of funding more winter gritting, local roads maintenance and road safety measures in estates.
A good question to ask is why is Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council not properly funding these essential services already? The reason is because this year, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil & independents provided a big tax cut to the largest property owners and commercial landlords in the country, reducing Local Property Tax income available to the council by €3m less than what council management said was needed to properly fund essential services. I live in an average semi-detached home and this tax cut by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and independents saves me €1 a week. I’d happily pay it in order to fund the above services.
Short explainer on council budgets
Each year in November, council management present us with a Draft Budget for the year ahead. This includes projections for income and expenditure, a best estimate that the various council departments can make and put together by the Finance department to make sure projected income and expenditure are balanced.
This Draft Budget is then presented to the 40 elected councillors to vote on. Councillors can make changes (amendments) to the Draft Budget, which each get voted on. If any councillors’ changes get a majority vote of councillors they become part of the budget then.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Budget income 2025
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s operational budget, like most local authorities in Ireland, are funded by 4 main sources of income: Commercial Rates (paid by business for each property they operate from), Local Property Tax (LPT – paid by every private residential property owner), grants from central government and council housing rents.
In 2025, projected council income is €281m, mainly from Commercial rates (€112m), LPT* (€63m), grants & subsidies from central government (€90m) and council housing rents (€22m). *Note: we are required to transfer a large chunk of our LPT income into housing and roads capital projects so it doesn’t appear as income in the operational budget.
Beyond these big 4 income sources, parking income is the next highest source of income. It was projected at €6.6m for 2024 but actual income ended up being €6.9m. For 2025, management projected it at €7.1m.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Budget 2025
Thank you to my Green colleagues Councillor Rob Jones, Councillor Méabh Cody (covering maternity leave for Councillor Eva Dowling), Councillor Tom Kivlehan, Councillor Lauren Tuite and Councillor Conor Dowling who supported improving services for our communities.
See here for further details on this year’s budget. I summarised a previous year’s budget here.
