Homeowners in both Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal will see no increase in their local property tax (LPT) bills next year after councillors voted to retain the rate at 2026 levels.
LPT, which is charged on the value of a property, has a base rate that can be raised by up to 25 per cent, or lowered by up to 15 per cent, by each local authority on an annual basis.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown was last year the only local authority in the State to apply the full 15 per cent discount to household’s LPT bills and has repeated the move this year.
Councillors voted by 27 to 12 to implement the full rate reduction, against the recommendation of the council’s executive, which had urged them to rein in the cut to 7.5 per cent to help maintain council services and cope with rising inflation.
Labour councillors had supported the 7.5 per cent cut, while Green councillors put forward a motion to keep LPT at the national base rate and implement no reduction. However, the majority of councillors supported Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil motions to implement the 15 per cent cut.
Council chief executive Frank Curran said the reduction of 15 per cent represented a €10.4 million loss to the council. “We’re not even standing still with inflation, and it will inevitably lead to [a] reduction in services.”
Fine Gael councillor Jim Gildea, who proposed the 15 per cent rate cut, said: “Increasing the cost to our citizens is not the way to bridge the gap of €10 million. We have to look elsewhere.”
Green Party councillor Oisín O’Connor said the average homeowner would only be saving a “few euro a month” from the 15 per cent reduction.
Those who would benefit were owners of “millionaire mansions” and “private investment funds, who own blocks of apartments, who stands to gain hundreds of thousands of euro from tonight’s vote”.
Meanwhile in Fingal, 29 councillors voted in favour of retaining the 5 per cent reduction to LPT, with nine voting against.
It was the same LPT rate as last year, meaning there will be no change in the bills of those resident in the council area.
Sinn Féin councillor Angela Donnelly had proposed a 15 per cent cut to the rate, saying thousands of people were already struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.
“We get very few opportunities to make decisions that will directly impact the residents in Fingal. Today is one of those rare occasions to do the right thing and give people a break,” Donnelly said.
However, her proposal to cut the rate by 15 per cent was voted down by 27 to eight votes.