How Dublin City Councillors have agreed to spend the city’s day-to-day budget in the coming year

Dublin city councillors agreed on Monday to spend €1.69bn next year on day-to-day operations, with a budget that scraped through following a contentious split on whether to increase rents for social tenants. 

The council is set to spend around €200 million more than it did last year. 

Most of the money to fund council services comes from government grants, commercial rates, social housing rents – and a small sliver from local property taxes. 

The big spending line items are housing and building (€862m), environmental services (€306m), transport (€162m), recreation and amenity (€146m), and development management (€110m). 

Spending on homeless services is expected to increase significantly as it has each year for the last five years, more than doubling from €194m in 2022 to an estimated €406m for 2026.

Dublin City Council is trying to negotiate with the Department of Housing for more help with homeless spending, as the council’s contribution has reached €27m. 

The discussion at the meeting centred on whether to increase rents for social housing tenants, which the CEO’s budget says would bring in €32m, to fund better maintenance of homes. The council’s rent intake for 2025 was estimated at around €110m.

Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, and others backed a motion tabled by People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy, who proposed that the council should not raise rents because it would leave the poorest in the city worse off. 

Instead, he suggested the council plug the gap in its finances by hiking commercial rates, with a rebate to ensure it hit only the largest businesses. 

Similar schemes are working in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Limerick City and County Council, said Reddy.

But his motion was defeated by 31 votes to 28, and the budget scraped by with 31 votes to 30. 

Meanwhile, Social Democrats Councillor Cian O’Farrell asked whether the council had received any funding yet to implement the big vision for the transformation of the city centre under the Taoiseach’s taskforce. It still hasn’t. 

In and out

The lion's share of what the council spends comes from government grants, which should bring in a total of €734m next year, says the budget. 

Councillors also agreed to increase commercial rates by around 2.5 percent.“This proposed increase is in line with the expected rate of inflation in 2026,” the budget says.

With that, the council should bring in an estimated €430m in rates in total, the budget says. Both from the increase, and the expected increase in businesses income. 

Dublin City Council also estimates it will take in €443.5m in goods and services – which includes €142m from council rents and €60m in local property tax.

Spending overall on housing and building is set to rise by €124m, from €738m this year to €862m next year, driven by the increased costs of homeless services, long-term leasing of homes and spending on housing maintenance.

Given the skyrocketing spend on homeless services, the council has gone to ask the Department of Housing for more help, the budget says.

It has submitted a business case to the department “with a view to increasing the level of state funding available to run this nationally important service”, it says. 

Fine Gael Councillor Declan Flanagan asked how much the council will be borrowing in 2026 to fund housing maintenance. 

Council CEO Richard Shakespeare said the council is borrowing €27m for housing maintenance “to fill the gap from last year”.

It costs €3.2m per year for 10 years to pay it back, he says, and they also have other debts from previous years. He’ll ask the finance team to total up all debt payments for housing maintenance from recent years, he says. 

Behind the rent increases

The Dublin City Council budget says it needs to increase rents to bring in an additional €32m to improve maintenance on more than 26,000 social homes it owns. 

Council tenants pay rent according to their incomes, but it's complicated.

In recent years, the highest earner in a Dublin City Council home paid 15 percent of their income, with the first €32 per week discounted from the calculation. 

Dublin city councillors agreed, narrowly, on Monday to increase that to 18 percent – but also to discount the first €55 to dampen the effects of the increase on lower-income tenants. 

Even the lowest-income tenants will pay more rent, but by a slightly lesser degree than those who earn more. 

The new calculation also has an increase for secondary earners who live in a social home. Their rent contribution is currently capped at €21 per week, which will increase to a maximum of €40 per week. 

Dublin City Council also estimates the income of self-employed people, which up to now was assessed at €500 to €560 per week. From 2026, that will be assumed to be €700 per week. 

The council also lifted other maximum caps on household rents, so that all tenants with an income will pay something. 

At the meeting, as protestors gathered outside, councillors went back and forth on the impacts of rent increases on the poorest in the city and the need to increase rents to tackle poor maintenance.

“Increases in rents and property tax will impose further pressure on already struggling families,” said Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan. “Families are really struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.”

Social Democrats Councillor Jesslyn Henry read out a communication from a constituent who was a victim of domestic violence and has struggled to survive as a single parent.

 “How many of you have no heat and live on a bag of potatoes, bread and eggs?” Henry read.

The woman described how she worked as a cleaner at night and had to leave her children unsupervised to go to work, and lived in fear of being reported to social workers. 

Now they are older, they work after school to help pay the bills, she says. “How do I break the cycle?”

But Green Party Councillor Michael Pigeon said the council needs the money to improve the maintenance of its neglected properties. 

"There's a clear direct line between the low rents we charge and the low crappy levels of maintenance we provide,” he said.

Reddy, the People Before Profit councillor, asked whether the council had consulted groups like homeless charities or Social Justice Ireland about the impact of the increases.

He asked in particular about the impact of the changes on HAP tenants, who often also have to pay high rents to landlords as well as council rent and are at greater risk of poverty, he said, than any other group of renters. 

The rent review was carried out by the members of two council committees – the Housing Committee headed by Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney and the Finance Committee headed by Sinn Féin Councillor Séamas McGrattan – and other groups were not consulted, said Mick Mulhern, the council housing manager. 

Fingal County Council has also agreed to raise rents for its tenants next year, but up to 14.5 percent of income, and not by as much as council officials had sought. 

Funding the taskforce

Also at the Dublin City Council budget meeting, Social Democrats Councillor Cian O’Farrell asked whether the council has received any funding yet to roll out the recommendations of the Taoiseach’s Taskforce for Dublin. 

That promises to revamp the city centre including O’Connell Street, regenerate all social housing in the inner city, tackle dereliction and improve feelings of safety among other things. 

No, said council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare. “Once we know, we will let you know whether we have been successful or not.” 

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said implementation of the recommendations is “being supported by new dedicated delivery structures in Dublin City Council and is being underpinned by NDP [national development plan] investment funding”.

They didn’t directly respond to a question about what the budget is or when the council can expect to get funding to roll it out. 

“The Department will work collaboratively with Dublin City Council and any established special purpose vehicle established by Dublin City Council,” they said.