Tipperary County Council seeks commercial rates hike in its draft 2026 budget

Tipperary County Council has proposed a 5% hike in the commercial rate levied on businesses next year ahead of its annual budget meeting in Nenagh on Friday but there will be intense negotiations over the next two days to prevent, reduce or mitigate the increase.

A lengthy workshop between councillors and management took place on Tuesday to go through the Draft 2026 Budget to see where savings or alternative revenue could be sourced. 

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If approved by councillors, the 5% increase will bring the Annual Rate on Valuation (ARV) for Tipperary to 0.2232 in 2026 and follow a 5.5% hike in commercial rates this year.

While the council argues Tipperary has the fifth lowest ARV in the country and this increase is needed to avoid cuts to its services, there are grave misgivings within even Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael party members to approving a 5% hike in rates.

They form the bulk of the council’s FG/FF/Labour voting pact.

One FG councillor The Nationalist spoke to ahead of the pre-budget workshop said there was a split among the party’s 10 councillors over supporting the rates increase.

He was among the Fine Gael members opposed to supporting the rates hike. He fears it will threaten the campaign to set up a Business Improvement District (BID) company in Clonmel to improve its struggling town centre’s prosperity. The BID proposal must be approved by a plebiscite of rate payers in order to be established.

The councillor, who didn’t wish to be named, believed council management were “very lazy” in terms of finding savings in the budget or other sources of revenue to generate the extra income.

Concern about the negative impact the rates hike will have on support for the Clonmel BID proposal was also voiced by Clonmel Independent Cllr Richie Molloy. He said he was loath to vote for the 2026 budget.

If Clonmel businesses were willing to pay the levy to fund the BID company then they shouldn’t also have an increase in their rates, he argued.

Fianna Fáil Cllr Kieran Bourke said he was undecided on whether to support the budget. He was concerned about the impact the rates hike will have on businesses already under pressure. But he is also concerned about cuts to services if the hike isn’t approved.

He is particularly fearful of a threatened budget cut to the Housing Adaptation Grants for Older People and People with Disabilities as there is a lot of demand for these grants.

“It’s very easy to vote ‘no’ to something and play populist politics when you know it’s going to be passed by the usual people but we have to have services going forward,” he said.

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