Councillors in Tipperary worry about inflation amid funding allocation discussions for 2026

Councillors in the Tipperary/Cahir/Cashel Municipal District have approved the council's Draft Budgetary Plan of €1.361 million for 2026.

Members of the Municipal District were presented with a draft of the budgetary plan for 2026, at their recent monthly meeting held on Tuesday October 21.

Mark Connolly, the council's Director of Finance, spoke to the meeting about the plan for the draft budget for 2026.

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The Draft Budgetary Plan sets out the discretionary funding, called General Municipal Allocation (GMA) for each district.

Funding allocated to the district will be based on 2022 census figures, said Mr Connolly. 

The council will receive a total amount of €1.361 million under this funding, which is the exact same amount as last year's. 

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Mr Connolly explained that this funding is comprised of a baseline allocation of €350,000, and the local property tax received which was just over €1 million. 

Speaking about other potential expenditure amounts, Mr Connolly said "I'm estimating that we will at the minimum have a similar income to what we would have had in 2026, if we don't get any other forms of income."

Fine Gael Cllr John Crosse asked Mr Connolly whether inflation was factored into this year's allocation. 

Independent Cllr Liam Browne also asked if inflation was included in the figures. "The draft budget plan is exactly the same as the one for 2025 and given the fact that we have a cost of living crisis, if we get the same money as 2025, we will be doing less with that money in 2026. Either we're going to have less services or less quality of services. How can we justify that to people?," asked the councillor. 

Independent Cllr John O'Heney questioned whether there will be changes to government grants or other resources that will be made available to the district for 2026. 

"The allocations are based on the income we have," Mr Connolly told the meeting. "There's only three ways we can increase our income. Commercial rates, local property tax and additional grants from central government. We are very limited to where we can get additional funding.

"So far the GMA is the only income that is confirmed," concluded Mr Connolly.