Dublin City is facing a cash crisis - partly because the Government will not pay rates on its offices and public buildings, according to the Lord Mayor, Mr Dermot Lacey.
The Lord Mayor, who is now proposing a city tax to make up the funding gap, said that next year's shortfall was estimated at €28 million, while the projected shortfall will have accumulated to €264 million by 2006
The proposed tax, one of a number of revenue-raising ideas put forward in the report of the Lord Mayor's Commission on Funding, which was published yesterday, is currently being studied by the city council's finance committees.
Other proposals in the report include ending the exemption by which Government Departments and public buildings - which take up more than 30 per cent of the available commercial space in the city - pay no rates.
According to the report, the main causes of the funding difficulty are:
Rapidly-increasing costs of waste-management.
Pay increases arising from benchmarking.
Rapidly-increasing costs in the provision of water and waste-water facilities.
Additional spending by the council's recreation and amenities section.
The provision of a full-time fire service, which is a "significant burden on ratepayers".
The report also calls on the city council to increase efficiency and make savings of at least 1 per cent, which would lead to a saving of €20 million by 2006. This is considered necessary "if services are not to be drastically curtailed or rates or charges increased to unacceptable levels".
It also warns that the business community already faces stiff competition from the suburbs and says that the prospect of raising taxes could make the city prohibitively more expensive than other places.
One way this could be overcome, according to the Lord Mayor, is to institute a "bed tax", payable by tourists.
Other suggestions include ending existing rates exemptions for government, which discriminate against the capital, and improvements in the Local Government Fund, the method by which the Government funds local authorities.
The report calls for new environmental taxes on such things as packaging.
These should be channelled towards the Local Government Fund to assist local authorities in meeting spiralling waste charges.
It also urges the council to become more efficient at collecting the domestic refuse charge.
The Lord Mayor made the point that Dublin, with 13 per cent of the State's population, received just 10 per cent of the Local Government Fund. Residents of the city obtained just 80 per cent of the average contribution per head, he argued.
Commenting on the report yesterday, the Lord Mayor said that much of the problem arose because Dublin was "extremely badly treated by government".
The population of the city doubled each day with the influx of workers who lived outside it. "But there is no financial support for providing facilities, such as water and street-cleaning, required by a population double that of the residential element. Then there are charges the city incurs because it is the capital, the seat of government. These include decorating before and after State occasions."
However, he maintained that the Government, while content to have its seat in Dublin, was not prepared to pay its way. "The use of about a third of all the commercial space in the city without paying rates discriminates against the city," he insisted.
New sources of funding are to be looked at. These include the issuing of bonds and "out-sourcing" of council activities.
Areas which could be developed include car parks and office-letting.
The report is currently being considered as part of the process of drawing up next year's estimates of expenditure.
