John Cummins (Waterford, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this matter, as he regularly does in this Chamber . His advocacy for Kildare is certainly well noted. As he will be aware, I was in Kildare last Thursday, when I visited the local authority and engaged with the executive team. Much of what the Deputy has raised here in his question was the subject of the discussion we had.

The system of funding of local government in Ireland is a complex one. Local authorities derive their income from a range of sources, including commercial rates, charges for goods and services provided, the local property tax, and grants from various Departments and State agencies for both capital and current expenditure purposes. The central government grant funding to Kildare County Council increased by more than 60% from €168.3 million in 2018 to €271.9 million in 2023, according to its audited annual financial statements. Across all schemes and funding sources, the Department provided €164.9 million in 2020, €218.6 million in 2023 and €233.2 million in 2024.

With regard to local property tax, LPT, which makes up approximately 6% of the sector's locally raised income, a review of baselines was completed by a working group in 2023, which resulted in an increase of €1.5 million to the baseline LPT for Kildare County Council.

We have established a local democracy task force, which had its first meeting last week, where funding for local authorities is an important stream. I will give further detail on LPT allocations in my follow-up replies.

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