A Carlow councillor is slamming claims that hiking the Local Property Tax could lead to more funding from central government.
It was decided at yesterday’s meeting of Carlow County Council that there will be no changes to the tax rate this year. Read about that here.
However, it came against the recommendations of Chief Executive Kathleen Holohan, who was seeking the maximum 15% increase on the tax.
She explained that if the local authority wish to seek additional supports, an increase in LPT would show the Government that they’re exhausting options to cover their €4,800,000 shortfall.
But Cllr Cassin says these claims proved untrue after last year’s tax hike of 5% noting “She did last year to be fair and then told us last year that we were going to lose services and then literally within the flick of a switch there was 600,000 sent down from central government and there was no need for an increase last year, so I don’t buy that ‘we need the maximum’ because firstly it’s a tax that’s extremely unfair and secondly we shouldn’t be dependent on that for services, that should be for special projects for people, we shouldn’t be using that as part of our main statutory budget”.
Cllr Cassin adds “We haven’t had an increase in funding since 2008 so we can’t really be expected to buy that, you know 2008 which is 13 or 14 years ago, we can’t keep expecting to be buying that we’re going to get an increase if we comply and to be fair Carlow County Council does comply quite regularly, all the time with the regulations set down by the Government to return a balanced budget and we don’t really see an increase”.
