Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Many measures can be used to measure the funding local authorities receive. On population size, this can be a crude instrument to determine what level of funding is delivered. As I said, the increase to Meath County Council since 2016 is very clear. Other avenues are available to, and are at the disposal of, the local authority to increase funding. One key issue is if the local authority takes a decision to vary its local property tax rate. If Meath County Council had raised the local property tax rate by 15% over the past six years, it would have brought in an extra €2.6 million to the fund.

We should look at the return on investment that some local authorities can get. An example is Longford, which is my constituency. It increased its local property tax which gave it access to huge funding streams from central government through the urban and rural regeneration funds.

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