Sir, – In voting to cut the rate of local property tax (LPT) by 15 per cent, I and my fellow Fine Gael councillors on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council would have deemed it appropriate to alleviate the burden of the most expensive amount of LPT payable in the country ("Councillors vote against property tax rise in Duún Laoghaire, and Fingal", September 13th).
The siphoning off of 20 per cent of LPT collected within the county to a nationally distributed equivalence fund was mentioned within the council debate associated with the motion to cut the tax rate. The rationale of this fund is to ensure that no local authority is worse off under the LPT regime when compared with previous local government fund contributions.
However, it would be more appropriate for every local authority to be able to obtain support to some degree from the equivalence fund, instead of the current scenario whereby the largest contributors to the fund derive no benefit.
The principle of absolute subsidisation applied should be actively reviewed, with an ambition for an indirect rebate mechanism obtainable through the equivalence fund to be ultimately realised with respect to the four local authorities in Dublin, particularly. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JOHN KENNEDY,
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown
County Council,
Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.