The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, has implicitly threatened to abolish Dublin City Council and hand the administration of its affairs to a commissioner if it does not agree a budget for 2003 by tomorrow week.
In a letter to the Dublin city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, yesterday, a Department of the Environment official said the Minister was giving councillors one last chance to agree on how to pay for €700 million worth of spending this year.
"No further extension of the budget period will be possible in this case," he warned. The 52 councillors are now expected to hold a crisis meeting on January 16th.
If they fail to agree on unpalatable increases in bin charges or other revenue raising measures, they effectively face being stood down as councillors and losing their seats on health boards, vocational education committees and other bodies.
The crisis has arisen after the council, meeting on December 29th last, would neither accept a proposed a €36 increase in bin charges nor agree other measures to fill a €16 million gap in estimated revenue for next year.
This put them in breach of their obligations under the law to agree a budget for 2003 by the end of December. The councillors then sought more time from the Minister, who had the power to abolish the council if it did not agree a budget by December 31st.
The letter from the Department of the Environment to the council, sent last night, said the Minister was granting an extension to allow for one more budget meeting on January 16th.
"The Minister has already emphasised his concern at the city council's failure to conclude their budget within the prescribed period," it said.
There is still a prospect that councillors, who will be anxious not to lose their positions as local authority members, will agree a budget.
Many of the 52 Dublin city councillors were absent from the last meeting which took place over the Christmas period, and will be present at the next one.
This is the second time in three years in which Dublin City Council has failed to agree a budget on time.
The situation is likely to be replicated in other local authorities around the State as councillors struggle to deal with growing demands for services against a background of financial stringency imposed by the Government.
The Labour Party's environment spokesman, Mr Eamon Gilmore, said last night that the demands on local authorities to provide extra and costly services were growing all the time, while the Government was refusing to provide adequate funding to pay for these services.
The Minister granted the extension of time to the council after being told by the Dublin city manager that there was still a prospect of agreement on the budget.
The council's budget meeting was adjourned three times during December to give political parties time to come up with alternatives to the increase in bin charges.
So far, however, they have been unable to find a way out