Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The funding itself is pretty complicated. There are many different streams of funding coming into local authorities from various Departments and agencies and I want to touch on some of them. I was looking, for instance, at the total funding that goes into local government from across all Departments, including the local property tax. We are almost back up to the 2011 levels of funding. It is slightly under that level but we are almost there or thereabouts. There are huge discrepancies, however, between some local authorities. Dublin City Council is currently 31% higher than it was in 2011. South Dublin County Council is 25% higher and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is 26% higher. All of the other councils are less and are not meeting that. Is there a reason for this? Is it because there are capital projects happening in those areas? Is additional funding coming from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, for example, to meet particular projects or is it perhaps to balance out the per capita funding rates?