October is when the local property tax rates are set for the next year, and discussion of the topic dominated this month’s meeting of Fingal County Council.
After June’s local elections, when Labour and Fine Gael became the joint-largest party on the council, the two parties (along with Fianna Fáil) formed a governing coalition.
In the first major decision made by the new Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil administration, the rate will remain at 7.5% following a recommendation from the Corporate Policy Group.
The decision to cut the rate to 7.5% was a point of contention at the meeting, with opposition parties on the council advocating for a full 15% cut.
Fingal County Council Mayor Brian McDonagh set out his stall on the issue during the meeting, saying “one of the basic functions for us that want to provide public is figuring out where we are getting the money.”
“One of the serious issues we have in Ireland is that we have a concentrated tax base and we don’t tax wealth in many different forms. I believe local property tax provides a lot of the discretionary funding we have. With a lot of funding, we don’t get to decide how it is spent; it is decided before it comes here.”
McDonagh noted that events carried out by Fingal County Council are funded by the local property tax, and that he fears that inflation levels is putting the council under pressure to raise funds.
“If we cut it by the full 15% we are in serious danger of having to cut back services,” he said.
The Labour councillor pointed to the likes of festivals, playgrounds and capital projects being funded through the local property tax.
He said that as far as Labour was concerned, it would be “prudent” to keep the budget level at what it was.
“The question you gotta ask when any of us come in here asking for additional services is – am I prepared to politically decide how we are going to pay for it?”
McDonagh’s Labour colleague John Walsh said “this is absolutely not a tax on ordinary working people.”
“So many red herrings are being dragged into this debate; I pay management fees, I’m an apartment dweller. Management fees are often deeply oppressive. The management fee in my estate dwarfs the local property tax by a factor of 5.”
“The idea that reducing local property tax will give relief to apartment dwellers like myself is rubbish.”
He said the idea of enacting a 15% tax cut is a “deeply right-wing position – that is not an argument, that is just a fact.”
“I’d like the councillors who want a 15% cut to name what services they’d like to cut.”
Fine Gael councillor Ted Leddy said, “if you’re calling for a 15% cut and increased spending, you are being irresponsible.”
He noted that councillors were given the power to make tax decisions in 2014 and said “if you’re just using the powers we have to just be populist, you are not making a good case that more power should be devolved to councillors.”
Fianna Fáil councillor Eoghan O’Brien said “I don’t believe it’s a credible stance for people to come in and look for the full 15% reduction without saying what they would propose to cut from our budget.”
“You can talk until the cows come home about what X party would do in Y government, but this is a decision for the members in this room.”
He said that as far as Fianna Fáil were concerned the local property tax helps improve and maintain local services.
Solidarity and National Party councillors were in agreement that the 15% tax cut should be introduced; albeit for wildly different ideological reasons.
Solidarity councillor Ruth Coppinger said “the property tax is not based on your income; it is based on a costing of your family home. It isn’t progressive, it it based on geography and other factors.”
“This was brought in during the austerity era in 2011; we’re not in the austerity era now. The council has a huge amount of wealth. What we’re talking about is the untapped and untaxed wealth in this society, not hitting ordinary working people again and again.”
“A millionaire pays the same as a health worker. That is the problem we have with it.”
National Party councillor Patrick Quinlan said “the councillors are making the point it’s the price of a cup of coffee or 40 cents a week; small amounts of money don’t add up until you add apply that to a vast group of people.”
“What did the council do before the tax came in? It didn’t function, didn’t provide services, provide events or activities? No, it did.”
He said the 7.5% reduction doesn’t go far enough, and neither did the 15% rate; he called for the rate to fully abolished.
Sinn Féin councillor Angela Donnelly pointed to recent statistics from Social Justice Ireland which showed that one in eight people in Ireland lives on an income below the property line.
Research carried out by Donnelly found that 60% of properties in Dublin 15 were in Tax Bands Four and Five, which translates to the average family in a three-bedroom house paying between €374 and €458 a year.
“We can talk in pence like we are only talking about a few coppers here and there, but the property tax is a hefty bill for people to pay,” and said that she would like to reduce the rate even more than the maximum rate of 15%.
She said that government parties announced a series of one-off measures to tackle the cost of living crisis in the recent budget, but she said that representatives of those parties are “failing to give hard-pressed families a break” by not cutting the tax rate even further.
“We can sit here saying ‘isn’t the vintage picnic great, aren’t all these events fantastic?’ and they are, but I resent them being held up as a reason not to give them the full reduction that’s in our power.”
In a council vote, 29 councillors voted to cut the rate to 7.5% (all of Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s councillors voted in favour, along with five independent councillors along with Aontu and the Social Democats’ two councillors) with 10 voting against it (four Sinn Féin councillors, two Solidarity councillors, Dean Mulligan of Independents4Change, National Party councillor Patrick Quinlan, and independent councillors Tania Doyle and Darren Jack Kelly).