Fingal councillors vote to increase local property tax

Fingal councillors voted to increase the local property tax from what it was set at last year, at their July monthly meeting on Monday evening. 

This will mean the council will have more than a €1 million more to spend this year.  

Each year, councillors vote on how to vary the rate of the LPT, a tax on the market value of houses and apartments. 

They can vary it up or down by up to 15 percent from a basic rate set by the central government.

For the past three years, Fingal councillors voted to vary the tax to 7.5 percent below the baseline.

But this year, the council’s Corporate Policy Group – made up of the Mayor and the chairs of the seven strategic policy committees – recommended a slightly smaller reduction for 2026, Oliver Hunt, the council’s director of finance, told the meeting.

Their proposal to vary the LPT to only 5 percent below the baseline was put to a vote at Monday’s meeting.

Seventeen councillors from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Aontú, as well as independents, voted yes, while 16 from Sinn Féin, the Green Party, Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and the National Party voted no.

That new rate is set to give the council an extra €1.243m in discretionary spending for next year, Hunt said.

The LPT is estimated to bring into the council an income of €22.3m, which would help cover increased payroll costs and strengthen the council’s ability to create new roles, particularly in housing and operations, he said. 

“It also includes funding allocation to our capital projects,” he said. And it “includes capacity for funding of new facilities as well as increasing other council activities, such as community events, arts et cetera”. 

For homeowners, the change means an increase at one end of the scale of 5c per week for those in the new LPT valuation band of below €240,000 – and of 34c per week for those at the other end, with homes valued between €735,000 and €840,000.

People in the most common band – currently between €262,501 and €350,000, but under the new valuation band of €315,000 to €420,000 – will see their annual local property tax bill increase from €291 to €316, he said.

The LPT revaluation will take place on 1 November, and the next valuation period of five years is set to start in 2026, according to the Department of Finance.

Alternative proposals

Twenty-one of the 30 people who wrote in to the public consultation on what to do with the local property tax wanted it to go down, not up. 

This group asked for the tax to be varied downwards by between 11 percent and 15 percent, slides from the meeting show.

A motion introduced from Sinn Féin and People Before Profit councillors proposed varying the local property tax downwards by the full 15 percent. This would have meant less revenue for the council to work with. 

A motion tabled by councillors from Labour, the Social Democrats and Green Party proposed that the LPT be set at a basic rate, and neither varied up or down – producing more revenue for the council to work with. 

Fine Gael introduced the motion for a kind of middle way, an increase from last year’s rate, by varying the LPT down by 5 percent this year.

“We’re all looking for more money for various projects across all our wards, and inflation is hitting Fingal County Council and everyone else,” said Tom O’Leary, a Fine Gael councillor, and the newly elected mayor. 

Fine Gael Councillor Aoibhinn Tormey said her party supported the 5 percent downward variation because they wanted to see investment in playgrounds, sports facilities and events. 

And “We want to be able to take out loans as a council, which needs to be serviced through our revenue budget,” she said.

Sinn Féin Councillor John Smyth said his party couldn’t support this 5 percent downward variation, which is a tax increase. 

“We can talk about this in terms of cents per week, but in reality this is one of a never ending list of hikes, taxes and temporary measures that are being imposed on the average person for far too long,” Smyth said.

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 10.24am on 9 July to reflect that LPT bands are changing nationally, as well as Fingal's LPT rate – so this results in further changes to what people will pay.