CORK CITY COUNCILLORS voted tonight to reduce the local property tax by 10%.
Meanwhile, Louth councillors voted to reduce it by 1.5%, saying a bigger cut would have an impact on the local community.
Cork City Council
Two Cork city councillors abstained from the vote, including Workers Party councillor, Ted Tynan.
He told TheJournal.ie: “I abstained on voting on the basis the tax is an unjust tax and it should be abolished, and I wasn’t going to to give it some sort of support in a tacit type of way [by] reducing it”.
He said that both Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil had proposed cuts to the property tax in Cork – Fianna Fail proposing a 10% cut and Sinn Féin a 15% cut.
After some discussion, the two motions were put to the councillors and Tynan said they were told that the first one to get overall support would go through.
Fianna Fáil’s motion passed by 14 to 11, with two abstentions.
Louth County Council
Meanwhile in Louth, the County Council voted for a 1.5% cut in the tax, with local councillor Dolores Minogue saying that was all the council could afford.
“We looked at all our budgets but a 15% cut wasn’t doable,” she said.
We would love to have given 15%, but too many services within the community and too many people are going to suffer [in that case].
Minogue said that such a cut would affect people from the local community such as organisations like the Tidy Towns.
She said that would “not be fair on people in the community”.
“Hopefully in the following years to come we will be able to keep chipping away at it,” she said.
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