Ireland

Galway city councillors pass contentious budget raising commercial rates by 6% during fractious meeting

Rates rise forced through by voting bloc featuring Fianna Fáil, Labour, Sinn Féin and independents

The council executive wanted to raise rates by 15%. Photograph: Getty Images
The council executive wanted to raise rates by 15%. Photograph: Getty Images
Andrew Hamilton
Fri Dec 13 2024 - 20:14

The democratic integrity of Galway City Council was questioned during a fractious emergency meeting of the local authority in Galway on Friday afternoon.

After four weeks of deadlock, councillors eventually passed a controversial budget that will see the commercial rates paid by businesses in the city increase by 6 per cent next year. The budget was forced through by the local authority’s ruling bloc, known as the Pact, which includes councillors from Fianna Fáil, Labour, Sinn Féin and independents Mike Cubbard and Declan McDonnell.

The executive of the local authority had been seeking a rate increase of 15 per cent, which chief executive, Leanord Cleary, described as being central to a “defining budget” for the city. Discussion on the proposed budget had been deadlocked for weeks with finance director, Helen Kilroy, reminding councillors earlier this week that ministers have the power to fire the elected members if “financial planning is insufficient”.

An amendment to the budget, which strips more than €6 million from the council’s proposed expenditure for next year, was presented to councillors and officials by the bloc on a single piece of paper during this afternoon’s meeting. The amendment was proposed by Cllr Mike Cubbard, who said that a 15 per cent rates increase “would have been the death of a number of businesses in this city”.

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Fine Gael councillor, Eddie Hoare, criticised members of the bloc for “trying to make a 6 per cent rise look like a 9 per cent reduction”. He also criticised the democratic process of the budget citing a “lack of respect and a lack of engagement for some of the elected members”.

He said “we have 18 councillors representing the people of the city, they didn’t elect six to speak on our behalf”. The Social Democrats’ Alan Curran criticised the budgetary process and the last-minute presentation of the amendment.

“This has been an eye opener about how this council works. A lot of us, perhaps naively, thought that we would be working together to tease this out,” he said.

Mayor of Galway and member of the voting bloc, Peter Keane (FF), defended the action of the group. “When we talk about leadership and who talks to who, the dynamic is what the dynamic is, and it has been that way here for years. If the Pact [voting bloc] talk to people, they talk to people, if they don’t, they don’t,” he said.

Before a final vote, chief executive, Leanord Cleary, formally recorded his objections to the amendment.Despite the objections, the amended budget was passed with 12 councillors voting in favour, four against and one abstention.