THE GOVERNMENT has been accused of using non-payment of the household charge as an excuse for making cuts to local authority funding that had been previously planned or implemented anyway.
Independent TD for Donegal South West Thomas Pringle said the budgets for roads, libraries and housing maintenance had been reduced in his county before the level of payment of the household charge had been taken into account.
Figures from the Department of the Environment show Donegal County Council had its third-quarter grant payment from the Government reduced by more than €1 million to €6.7 million as a result of a local shortfall in payment of the household charge.
Payment of the charge is running below 50 per cent in Donegal, with recent figures showing it had been accounted for in respect of 31,729 out of an estimated 65,331 properties.
A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said yesterday: “As full household charge compliance has not yet been achieved, the Minister has had to revise the payment profile of general purpose grants, with local authorities receiving a reduction of 5 to 15 per cent in their expected third-quarter payment.”
He said a number of matters were given consideration before cuts were implemented, such as the overall level of funds available in the Local Government Fund and the level of household charge compliance to date.
The position of individual local authorities, in terms of scale and financial resilience, and the objective of providing grants to authorities enabling them to provide a reasonable level of service to communities were also taken into account, he said.
Mr Pringle said he understood the budget for library services in Donegal had been cut by €600,000, money available for housing maintenance was down by €275,000 and the budget for roads was also significantly down.
He believed the Government was linking non-payment of the household charge to cuts already decided on. “This is typical of handling of the whole household tax issue,” he said. “The only satisfactory outcome is that funding already allocated be maintained.”
The Local Government Management Agency said more than €100 million had so far been raised from the charge which has been paid in respect of 990,459 properties. The owners of 600,000 properties have yet to pay the charge and could face court prosecution.
The agency said it was working with “the law agents of the local authorities as we proceed through the various legal aspects of the household charge. However, any prosecutions taken will be by local authorities.”
