Budget deal: how it happened

Date Published: 12-Dec-2008

THE cross-party consensus which led to the City Council Budget package for next year being adopted this week evolved in the most unusual set of political circumstances.
In the end, a remarkable unity was achieved in the Budget which saw a proposed Rates increase of 3.8% cut to 1% . . . but not before therewas ‘many’s the slip between cup and lip’.
The main flashpoint occurred last Thursday when a Labour delegation arriving for a meeting with a city official met their Council mayoral pact colleagues — the three Fine Gael councillors and one other councillor — on the way out of another meeting with the City Manager.
Sensing that they were being ‘left behind’ in the Budget negotiations, the three Labour councillors
— Billy Cameron, Tom Costello and Colette Connolly — forged another ‘coalition’ over the weekend.