HOTELIERS HAVE said that local authority rates are “crippling” their industry at a time when the sector is experiencing severe hardship.
The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) has called on the Government to initiate an emergency provision which permits its members to declare inability to pay rates in the current economic environment.
Incoming IHF president Paul Gallagher, general manager of Buswell’s hotel in Dublin, said that local authorities were “getting away with robbery”, and called for a 30 per cent reduction in rate bills. He was speaking at the IHF annual conference in Galway yesterday.
Mr Gallagher said that over €80 million every year was “squeezed out of the hotel and guesthouse industry in local authority rates” which are set by individual local authorities without recall to any independent evaluation.
An IHF survey has found Kildare to be the dearest county, charging just over €2,000 per room in rates, followed by Cork, Limerick, Dublin and Carlow at just over €1,500.
Longford is the cheapest at just over €670 per room in rates, with Donegal, Mayo, Westmeath and Waterford charging between €930 and €960 per room, according to the IHF.
“Under the law since 2001, the Valuation Office are supposed to be carrying out a revision of the rateable valuation of every rateable property in the country and, to date, only two local authorities in the entire country have completed this process,” Mr Gallagher said.
“Reform is needed soon and in the meantime an inability to pay and a uniform 30 per cent reduction in rates must be enacted.”