Call for overhaul of local government funding model
Cork Chamber chief executive Conor Healy led calls last night after the Irish Examiner highlighted the soaring number of cases coming before Cork District Court for overdue commercial rates.
Judge Olann Kelleher spoke out after 170 rates cases were listed at the district court. He said there were a further 200 similar cases due before him in the next two weeks.
“I am now concerned that the number of cases is going up and up. But people can pay less and less,” he said.
“I accept the money is owed. At what stage does the council decide it is not in society’s interests to keep suing and suing?”
Mr Healy said commercial rates remain one of the most substantial fixed costs for businesses.
“It is imperative at this stage to reduce the high reliance on business income by diversifying the funding streams through which local authority income is generated. Reducing the dependence on commercial rates will ultimately reduce business costs, improve competitiveness, increase economic activity thereby stimulating job creation and higher economic returns for the State.”
In Cork City alone, there were 6,450 rateable occupiers across the city liable for rates in 2011. They were expected to pay about €65m in rates. However, as of yesterday, the council was owed in the region of €15m in outstanding rates.
The Cork Business Association urged its members struggling to pay to approach the council and strike a deal.
“We must protect employment. We can’t have empty premises lying vacant,” said chief executive Donal Healy, who insisted that the Government must also do more to boost confidence and domestic spending.
Outspoken former Fine Gael senator Denis “Dino” Cregan, who owns one of the best-known chip shop chains in Cork, called on local authorities to show more compassion to local business owners struggling with the recession.
“Judge Olann Kelleher is right,” he said. “He is telling local authority officials that they must be more considerate and more compassionate — in particular to local businesses. Bringing them to court is not the answer. It’s the easy way out. They have to sort it out another way.”
He was speaking yesterday as he and his family held a special celebration at the Dino’s outlet in Blackpool — one of seven in the family chain — to mark 42 years in business.
Meanwhile, hair salon owner Michael White, who marks 45 years of Salon 33 on St Patrick’s Street on Saturday, said rates have soared over the years.
“If you pursue businesses for rates and put them out of business, you get nothing coming in,” he said.
The city centre was more relevant in 1967, when he opened his first salon, he said. He opened a second salon in Ballyvolane Shopping Centre in 1989, which is run by his wife, Jo.
However, a turnaround began in 1999 with the main drainage works, he said. This, combined with reduced and more expensive parking, and the introduction of clamping, pushed shoppers towards suburban shopping centres, he said.
He praised the council for investing in the public realm but said more needed to be done to improve public transport, and make parking more available and cheaper.
An underground electrical fault has plunged a large section of the front of Cork’s historic City Hall into darkness.
The glitch has affected the floodlighting system which bathes the front of the landmark limestone building with light at night.
It has knocked out the lights directed at one third of the building’s facade on MacSwiney Quay, and a section of the building on the Anglesea St side.
A spokesman for the council said electricians were trying to identify the fault in the hope of repairing it soon.
The problem has not affected the modern lighting system which lights up the 2007-built offices extension next door.
City Hall was designed by the firm of Jones and Kelly in Dublin. Éamon de Valera officially opened it on Sept 8, 1936.
The present building replaced the former City Hall which burned down in 1920.
— Eoin English
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