Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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It is important when we look at scenario one because it is not really spelled out anywhere in the report. Every single county outside Dublin loses out. Dublin benefits by 23%. About €40 million will be stripped away from councils outside Dublin, which means services will have to be cut unless the Exchequer is willing to fill that hole. So option one creates a major problem for local authority budgets, which are already constrained. I agree with Deputy Chambers. There is significant frustration that a local authority tax was introduced and that on one hand, a local authority was given the powers to raise this tax and on the other, Exchequer funding of equal amounts was taken from the same local authorities. This would represent a very bad scenario for every single local authority outside Dublin county yet this is under active consideration with no commitment to filling that gap.