Louth County Council votes in favour of its 2017 budget

LOUTH County Council’s bud get for 2017 was passed on Monday night by 14 votes to nine, with Fine Gael’s Maria Doyle refusing to approve it after she failed to secure an increase in rates rebates for vacant premises.

Introducing the budget for 2017, Chief Executive Joan Martin said that it was largely the same as the 2016 budget as there was no additional funding available to the local authority and they were dealing with a mixture of the same challenges.

These included debt collection, rates, and high vacancy rates in the two towns. She had no doubt that Brexit would also present its own challenges.

She had met all of the members of the Municipal Districts to talk about their issues and concerns and a lot of them fell into the category of roads, footpaths, traffic, regeneration of towns, bus routes, pay parking, etc. She had attempted to deal with as many of these as possible in the budget and the capital programme, she said.

The priorities for her were housing-related issues and she reported that the council had a very successful year in delivering targets and she expected that they would be able to draw down all the funding for 2016 available to them under Rebuilding Ireland.

Homelessness was one of the greatest problems and there had been a spike in the numbers of people presenting as homelessness in the last few months and if this continued it would be quite a considerable challenge for the council.

The housing construction industry was still struggling and they had reduced development levies in an effort to help it.

Their other priorities were economic development and creating jobs through the Economic Forum and working with local traders.

Tourism, she continued, has to have the greatest potential for the area even though Louth was starting from a low base and they were helping local providers to develop stories to fit in with the Ireland’s Ancient East campaign.

They were also putting a lot of money into festivals and would be appointing an advisor to ensure they get a massive input from tourism in 2017.

There were plans for the regeneration of town centres in both Drogheda and Dundalk and the council staff would seek every opportunity to get money from whatever source, be it EU or Intereg funding, that they can.

While she would like to see all the wishes of the councillors included in the budget, she could only work with the finance they have and she put the budget before them and recommended that it be adopted.

Cllr Maria Doyle complained that she hadn’t received any feedback to suggestions which she had made. She proposed that they change the rebate given to the owners of vacant premises from 50% to 75% as it has been a burden for small and medium property owners who were trying to lease out premises but were unsuccessful. She suggested the rebate only apply to premises of less that 500 sq ft as she understood the concerns around larger premises.

Ms Martin replied that the proposal should have been costed and Cllr Doyle was proposing a reduction in income, she must identify a cut in expenditure and where costs could be made.

Cllr Doyle said she had raised the matter in an email but had received no reply, to which Ms Martin told her she was sitting in the chamber long enough to know that she couldn’t change the budget.

She said she didn’t respond to any councillor over their submissions but looked at them all and included what she could in the budget.

Cllr Doyle argued that they shouldn’t be ‘ looking for blood from a stone’ from those who are not in business any more. Later in the meeting, Ms Martin said the increase rebate could cost in the region of €1.4 million and she would be ‘ hardpushed to find €100,000’.

Ms Martin said that the rates have been coming down from €65 to €63 and would come down €60 when they have a unified rate across the whole county.

Cllr Pio Smith said his difficulty was that feedback didn’t come to the councillors and they were being asked to vote on a budget which they had got less than a week previously. He felt that there was so much in it that they would need some kind of workshop to help them understand all the issues and implications of making changes to one area or another.

Director of Finance, Ms Bernadette Walshe replied that there had been a three day workshop in 2015 and they had produced a booklet and as things hadn’t changed much since then, she had thought that was suffice.

‘It clearly failed,’ said Mr Smith, who said that he was coming to view himself as ‘ a rubber stamp councillor’ and was becoming increasingly frustrated about what they could do.

Cllr Mark Dearey said that the problem regarding the rates reduction for vacant premises was that the money which they get has now being integrated into their budget and to change it would be extremely difficult, but he understood why Cllr. Doyle raised the issue.

Ms Martin revealed that if it hadn’t been for that cash coming into the council’s coffers, she would have had to decimate the community grants or the library service.

‘Our financial position is no better than it was two or three years ago.’

After a number of hours of debate, the council passed the budget by 14 votes to nine, with councillors from Sinn Fein voting against, along with Cllr. Doyle and Cllr. Marianne Butler.