Sinn Féin to vote for Dublin City council budget for first time

Rate cuts to Dublin businesses will be curtailed and an extra €5 million allocated to housing and homeless services in an attempt to pass Dublin City Council’s budget for next year.

Councillors will tonight vote on a budget of just under €750 million in gross expenditure to run the city in 2015. Included in that is €53 million the council expects to draw from its share of the property tax paid by Dublin homeowners, which has resulted in a €4.2 million surplus.

Sinn Féin will for the first time vote in favour of a city budget, following amendments agreed with Labour, the Green Party and some Independent councillors in advance of the meeting.

The budget, which was prepared by the council's finance department and recommended by chief executive Owen Keegan, sets out a cut of 1 per cent in commercial rates. However, councillors from the groupings above want to reduce that rate cut to 0.5 per cent, which would generate an additional €1.7 million to run the city.

Cycling officer

The councillors are proposing to use this money to fund a range of services including street cleaning, as well as the appointment of a cycling officer and to increase funding to prepare for 1916 commemorative events.

They have also agreed that a €5 million contingency fund would, if not otherwise required, be put into housing and homeless services with a priority on returning “voids” – vacant council housing stock – to use.

Almost €60 million has already been earmarked for homeless services next year, in excess of €7 million more than was spent on homelessness in Dublin this year.

Sinn Féin, the largest party on the council with 16 seats, last June entered into an agreement to share power on the council with Labour, which has eight seats, and the Greens, with three, as well as most of the 12 Independent councillors. The agreement means that Sinn Féin will hold the mayoralty for two terms, including during the Rising centenary, with the Independents also holding it twice and Labour once.

No mayor

The deal also puts the onus on those parties to pass the city’s budget.

If councillors cannot agree a budget for the city they run the risk of the council being dissolved and a commissioner appointed by the Minister for the Environment to run the city until the next local elections, which would mean there would be no mayor in 2016.

With 63 members on the council, 32 votes are needed to pass the budget. Without the support of the Independents, the three coalition parties have 27 votes, but it is likely that five Independents will support the budget.

People Before Profit and the other left party councillors will almost certainly vote against the budget and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are unlikely to support it.