Abbey Street in Ennis. Photograph: Páraic McMahon.
AN EIGHT percent increase in commercial rates is to be proposed by Clare County Council.
Elected members of the local authority will vote on the budget on Wednesday (tomorrow) with the matter flying through the four Municipal Districts of the county with little debate or resistance over the past two weeks and no reference to the planned rates hike.
To keep councillors on site, the Council Executive are proposing to keep the General Municipal Allocation (GMA) at the same rate for 2026. The GMA is used by elected members to fund local groups and organisations which they find helpful in securing votes come election time but also to deliver projects that would be left on the back-burner due to funding shortfalls from Central Government.
Ahead of the vote, councillors are beginning to come under pressure to object to the proposed hike in commercial rates by businesses but are also feeling the heat from the Council Executive to do what they are told.
If approved, it will be the second time since 2022 that Clare County Council have increased commercial rates. It will be the first Budget under the tenure of Gordon Daly as Chief Executive.
Business personnel have described the plan rates increase as a “hammer blow to businesses”. The vote takes place one day before the scheduled completion of the main construction phase of the long-running €11.5m public realm works in Ennis town which has served as an incredibly challenging period for businesses in the county town.
Rising costs for enterprises have been experienced by businesses all over Clare who will be rightly peeved if such a move is proposed by elected members of the Council. Such pressures include an increase in payroll costs, auto-enrolment is due to start in January, energy costs have risen substantially, non-owner-occupied businesses have seen rents rise, and insurance costs have risen, with higher premiums squeezing margins.
President of Ennis Chamber, Diarmuid McMahon told The Clare Echo, “The businesses in Ennis need a respite, an opportunity to win back custom after the disruption cause in recent years by public realm works”.
He continued, “In addition to the pain caused by the works, which undoubtedly will make Ennis a more attractive town in the long term, most businesses in Ennis have been hit by punitive revaluation of their commercial rates liability in recent years. Furthermore, Clare was one of only three counties in Ireland where commercial rates were increase in 2022, as the country came out of Covid. Rates were increased by 3.8% from 2022. The only other local authorities to increase commercial rates at that time were Cork and Leitrim. Now we find out that a proposal to increase commercial rates by a whopping 8% will be voted on tomorrow, at a time when the costs of doing business have escalated”.
For the many small businesses who say they no longer have long-term liquidity, the proposed 8% commercial rates hike by Clare County Council could prove a deciding factor on whether their business can survive into the future with McMahon labelling it as “bleak news”. He urged councillors to vote against the proposed 8% hike.
In less than sixty seconds, councillors in the Ennis MD approved their Budget for 2026. There was no reference to the impact felt by businesses in the county town since the October 2023 start of the public realm works, instead Mayor of the Ennis MD, Cllr Mary Howard (FG) pointed out to her colleagues there were proposing a budget which included €342,000 per councillor for their GMA. Cllr Tom O’Callaghan (FF) proposed the Budget with Cllr Paul Murphy (FG) on hand to second.
It took four minutes for elected members of the Shannon Municipal District to pass the budgetary plan and general municipal allocation (GMA) for 2026. It was proposed by Cllr John Crowe (FG) and seconded by Cllr Pat O’Gorman (FF). Head of Finance, Noeleen Fitzgerald told councillors it was proposed to keep their GMA at the same rate for 2026. She said the GMA would provide between €1m to €1.5m in the lifetime of this Council “which can be a great source of leverage and higher values when leveraged with other funding”.
“We have bits and pieces done everywhere from the roundabout in Ballycasey to The Old Lodge, we have been trying for ages to get them over the line, we came together and made an allocation from our GMA funding, it is an example of the good things coming out of the GMA,” Cllr O’Gorman outlined.
Cllr Crowe added, “everyone of us have projects that only for the GMA we wouldn’t have been able to get through in the last few years”.
At an online sitting lasting just over a minute, the West Clare MD Budget was proposed by Cllr Gabriel Keating (FG) and seconded by Cllr Joe Killeen (FF). “The allocation is the same as last year, it will be for a West Clare Municipal District General Municipal Allocation of €441,000, there is no change there,” senior staff officer Steve Lahiffe stated in response to Cllr Bill Slattery’s (FG) request to outline the monies involved.
While members of the Killaloe MD objected to passing the Budget last year, there was no complaints this time round, although their sitting was the longest of all Municipal Districts to consider the matter. They adopted their MD budget on the proposal of Cllr Pat Hayes (FF) and seconded by Cllr Tony O’Brien (FF).
