Dublin councils developing tax on hotel guests to fund upkeep of the city

Dublin's four local authorities have backed legislation that would allow tourists to be charged an extra fee as part of their stay in the city's hotels. File picture

A tax on hotel guests in Dublin being developed by a local authority team could raise €12m which could be spent on making the city a more attractive place to visit, it has been claimed. 

Dublin's four local authorities have backed legislation that would allow tourists to be charged an extra fee as part of their stay in the city's hotels. It could be in place by September.

Dublin City Council, Fingal and South Dublin County councils have agreed to a working group, while Dun Laoghaire Rathdown is also expected to back the work of the group, it has emerged.

While culture minister Patrick O'Donovan said a tourist tax was the "last thing we need to do" to add more costs to people, Dublin City councillor Hazel Chu said the plan has cross-party support and has been "two years in the making".

She said that tourists should "pay their little bit of share". The Green Party councillor said complaints about Dublin city were often about a lack of public toilets and lack of street cleaning which, she said, were usually because of a lack of funding.

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Ms Chu believes the tax could raise about €12m for Dublin city, but the councils have yet to confirm a figure. "That's 250 extra street cleaners, it's perhaps 50 public toilets. These are all things that we need," she told RTÉ's Today With Claire Byrne.

She also said the money could be ringfenced to attract more tourists to the capital, and provide more public services, including street cleaning. She said Dublin, and Ireland, was not attracting enough tourism.

"If you're a tourist walking around the city right now on a great day like today, it's glorious," she added.

But when you see the amount of rubbish, or you see streets not being cleaned, or you're running from place to place and you realise there's not a public toilet, the first thing you think is, 'well why would I not go to any one of the 18 countries in the EU that has better facilities because they do have this tourist tax in, and actually spend my money there?'

"This is going to be quite a small amount and it's not passed to the hoteliers. It's passed to tourists who come to our country and use the networks and parks and museums and we're asking them to pay quite a small amount."

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Irish Hotels Federation said there are "no grounds" to introduce an additional tourist tax. "Hotels are already making an enormous contribution in terms of taxes both toward central exchequer finances and supporting local authority services," they said.

"In Dublin, for example, hotels pay approximately €1,000 per bedroom to Dublin City Council (DCC) in commercial rates and levies to fund local authority services which equates to over €25 million to DCC per annum.

"In addition to this, swathes of Dublin City centre hotels and businesses pay a further 5% levy toward enhancing the city experience for visitors, residents, and workers. Placing the burden of additional taxes on international or domestic tourists, particularly at a time when we are trying to make Ireland stand out as an attractive destination for visitors, makes no sense at all."