Dublin businesses will pay the price as FF Councillors look for soft target – Duffy

Dublin’s small and medium businesses will be hit with increased rates when they can least afford it because Fianna Fáil Councillors were looking for a soft target, a Fine Gael General Election candidate has said.

Deirdre Duffy, a candidate in Dublin Central, said, “What we saw this week was councillors who were looking for a soft target to raise revenue.

“Fine Gael warned earlier this year that the Dublin Agreement signed by Fianna Fáil, The Green Party, The Labour Party and Social Democrats was doomed from the beginning.

“The agreement was a list of spending pledges with no revenue raising measures agreed – in fact the chaotic coalition couldn’t even reach an agreement on Local Property Tax – one of the main ways of raising revenue for the council.

“The agreement was never worth the paper it was printed on and now we have seen the result of that failure to make hard decisions for the wider good.

“Businesses are facing significant pressures at this time, particularly with Brexit on the horizon, and heaping further cost pressure on them makes no sense.

“And now it will be businesses across Dublin who will pay the price because of this vacuum of responsibility that those who hold the balance of power on the council have allowed to emerge,” she added.

“In typical Fianna Fáil fashion they are looking to blame everyone else for their poor financial management. Reckless Fianna Fáil simply can’t be trusted with finance at either national or local level.

“Governing involves hard decisions, but the decision made by the Council looked for the path of least resistance, taking aim at businesses again,” she concluded.