Commercial rates won't rise next year as Tipperary County Council approves €194m budget

Tipperary County Council’s budget of more than €194m for 2022 was approved by an overwhelming majority of councillors last Friday and the good news for businesses is that commercial rates won’t increase next year.
The budget was passed by 24 votes to four at the end of a marathon meeting of the elected council via Zoom.
In relation to commercial rates, the Annual Rate on Valuation (ARV) for 2022 adopted in the budget will be 0.1919, which is no change from this year.
Councillors were told that Tipperary County Council’s ARV is one of the lowest in the country and has remained largely unchanged for the past eight years.
Council Chief Executive Joe MacGrath, in his budget report, warned that keeping the commercial rate ARV at the same level was not sustainable.
“In real terms, the income from our commercial rates base has been reducing due to the contraction of our rates base associated with some business closures and reductions from appeals and revisions.
“It’s not sustainable for any business including the council to maintain pricing at consistent levels over a prolonged period while costs and demands on expenditure are increasing.”
After councillors examined and debated the draft budget for nearly four hours, Fine Gael whip Cllr Michael Fitzgerald proposed its adoption, declaring that it was the best council budget presented to him in his 42 years as a councillor.
Fianna Fáil whip Cllr Roger Kennedy seconded the budget’s adoption. He pointed out that at the beginning of the year they didn’t think the council would be proposing a budget in excess of €194m given the very difficult circumstances of the past 12 months.
But Clonmel-based Workers & Unemployment Action Group Councillor Pat English said he would be voting against the budget as he was very disappointed with the retention of the 10% increase in the Local Property Tax for 2022.
He contended this 10% increase was meant to be a once off in 2019.
He said the Workers & Unemployment Action Group was opposed to any tax on the family home.
Most people had already paid vast amounts of tax on their family home through VAT and Stamp Duty.
Cllr English also claimed the council’s budget for next year will once again mean a “totally inadequate” local authority house building programme to tackle the housing crisis in Tipperary and little or no maintenance or repair to its housing stock.
He said since rents have been harmonised throughout the county, council tenants have experienced large increases in their rent bills.
He described it as an “austerity” budget and also condemned once again the provision in the budget to pay money to councillors for attendance at conferences.
Sinn Féin councillors David Dunne and Tony Black also told the meeting they wouldn’t be supporting the budget because of the retention of the 10% Local Property Tax increase.
Before the vote on the budget, Independent Cllr Annemarie Ryan from Tipperary Town proposed an amendment seeking the commercial rate rebate applying to vacant commercial properties where the immediate rate payable is greater than €10,000 be reduced from 70% to 60% and that the funds accrued from that be ringfenced for works on derelict sites.
She argued this measure applied to the owners of larger premises and wouldn’t impact on smaller businesses.
Cllr English seconded her proposal.
Clonmel Cllr Michael Murphy, however, appealed to councillors not to support this amendment as there were many business owners of commercial premises of this size struggling “in the eye of a perfect storm”.
This measure would only put a further financial burden on them, he argued.
Cllr Ryan’s amendment was put to a vote of the council and was defeated by 26 votes to four.
The four councillors who voted against the adoption of the budget and in favour of the rates rebate amendment were Cllr Annemarie Ryan, Cllr Pat English, Cllr David Dunne and Cllr Tony Black