Budget

Budget Special 2021 - New initiatives and headline figures

General News
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This past year has been an extraordinary time for every single person in the county, as we have managed COVID-19 together, even as it took its toll on everyone physically, emotionally & financially.

Personal and community resilience as well as volunteer spirit has seen our local area thrive as best it could in the face of great adversity. Your County Council has worked hard and innovated to maintain the highest level and standard of service provision during 2020 and is committed to providing you with the very best in high quality and accessible public services in all areas of service provision through 2021.

To that end your elected Councillors recently adopted an expansionary Annual Budget for 2021 of over €211 million. The annual revenue Budget provides funding for a very broad range of services from road, cycle lane and foot path maintenance, energy efficient streetlighting, enhancing our parklands, sports and community facilities, developing biodiversity and heritage initiatives as well as providing grants for local businesses. The budget also provides for the maintenance and repair of the Council’s assets including its houses, corporate buildings, parks and Dún Laoghaire Harbour.

Full adopted Budget Book 2021

The Council provides over 700 different services to the residents, businesses and visitors in our county. In preparing the dlr Annual Budget, we must consider, hand in hand with our statutory obligations, our delivery of dlr’s corporate objectives and balance the varied needs of everyone in our area. This is an indepth process, involving many months of consideration due to the amount of services areas that the Council are involved in.

The emergence of COVID-19 earlier this year had an immediate and very detrimental impact on the Council’s finances with a significant reduction in several income streams, together with an increase in COVID-19 related expenditure.

The Council is obliged to adopt a balanced budget each year. If the rate of Local Property Tax was to remain unchanged from previous years it would have been necessary to implement a wide range of significant cuts to services in 2021, as a direct result of COVID-19.

The Council met in September to consider whether to vary the basic rate of Local Property Tax. In previous years it was reduced by 15%. As there was no decision to vary the basic rate for 2021 it reverted to the basic rate by default. As a result of the Local Property Tax reverting to the basic rate €7.8m of additional income will be available to the Council in 2021.

With this additional funding not only will it be possible to maintain the same level of services in 2021, but there are also several new initiatives included in the budget including the provision of additional bins and benches, beach accessibility works, new ladders and improved access at 40 Foot, additional business supports, extra tree planting and maintenance, summer camps for children with special needs, a cycle training programme for people with disabilities, cycleway cleaning and grants for high security locks for the elderly and grants for residents associations to provide additional planting, benches and wilding and a new dlr Beta Project.

These new initiatives were selected because they will improve the quality of life for residents, businesses and visitors to dlr by creating a more attractive and vibrant county. You can see further details of your local Budget 2021 in this edition of the dlr Times here

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