Homeowners across the city are facing a hike in their local property tax (LPT) to the highest level ever recorded in Cork city.<\/p>\n
At a meeting of council on Monday evening, councillors voted to approve a rate of LPT 15% higher than the baseline tax set by the national government, up from the previous rate of 12%, which was increased from 9% in 2024.<\/p>\n
It comes as Cork City Council recorded a revenue deficit for the first time in several years last year, of -\u20ac1,592,569.<\/p>\n
City council chief executive Valerie O\u2019Sullivan proposed an increase to 20%.<\/p>\n
Last year, new legislation was passed allowing local authorities to increase the LPT rate by up to 25% above the basic rate \u2013 previously, 15% was the maximum increase.<\/p>\n
An increase to at least 17% was needed to cover the costs of requests made by city councillors for work in their local areas, while 20% would provide additional income of nearly \u20ac2.5m that could be used for footpath repairs, traffic calming measures, playgrounds, and hosting Fleadh Ceoil na h\u00c9ireann, she said.<\/p>\n
The 20% rate would mean people would have to pay \u20ac32.40 more a year if their home was worth between \u20ac350,000 and \u20ac437,000, and \u20ac46 more if their home was worth between \u20ac525,000 and \u20ac612,000.<\/p>\n
However, Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Se\u00e1n Martin, the head of the council\u2019s finance committee, said that councillors would not agree to more than 15%.<\/p>\n
Fine Gael\u2019s Des Cahill added that some other councils in Ireland decrease the national rate and give people money off their LPT, and added that 15% was already the highest rate ever seen in the city.<\/p>\n
The four Sinn F\u00e9in councillors, as well as Independent Ireland\u2019s Noel O\u2019Flynn, Workers Party\u2019s Jerrica Struthers and Independent Albert Deasy, voted against any increase.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Joe Lynch said he acknowledged the challenging financial position the council was in, but added that the key to addressing that was for the parties in government to properly fund local government.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ms O\u2019Sullivan asked: \u201cWhat are we meant to do in the meantime?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All other councillors voted in favour of increasing the LPT variation to 15%, and to set it at this rate for three years.<\/p>\n
However, Ms O\u2019Sullivan said that this vote did not preclude the executive from raising the matter again next year when more funding would be needed, saying: \u201cYou can reject it, but there comes a time when you must make a connection between what you\u2019d like to do, and how it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeowners across the city are facing a hike in their local property tax (LPT) to the highest level…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[79,6037,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-639911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-news","tag-cork-city-council","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}