Dublin City Council vote to increase commercial rates as they pass budget

Commercial rates will increase by almost 3% in Dublin next year after city councillors passed its budget this evening.

It was voted through by 35 votes to 25 at a meeting in City Hall, after originally being put off last week.

Parking charges will also rise, with the increases being blamed on a funding shortfall from government.

Labour's Rebecca Moynihan says councillors were put in a difficult position:

"We were left in a really unenviable position of having €8.4m cut from our budget by central government because of Irish Water rates.

It's effectively because of Fine Gael at national government," she insisted. "If we had the Irish Water rate, we wouldn't have had to do this, we would have been able to balance the budget."