‘Payback time’ for Council on business rates

It’s payback time: Galway City Council expects a windfall in commercial rates arrears from businesses who struggled to pay during the recession and who are now flush again because of the economic upturn.

Head of Finance, Edel McCormack, confirmed this week that the local authority is already seeing an increase in businesses paying rates, as well as their rates arrears.

Now that the ‘good times’ are coming back, and business is beginning to ‘pick up’, Ms McCormack said she expects city businesses to start paying back the arrears that were built up during the years of recession when they couldn’t afford to pay rates’ bills.

She said this is already happening in some cases, and the Council has entered into payment plans whereby business pay both their commercial rates for the current year, as well as putting some money towards clearing arrears.

But Ms McCormack agreed there were more businesses that could be addressing their legacy debt.

“We worked with them during the recession. We engaged with them and put in place payment plans. Now that the economy is on the up we expect people to pay their rates and address their legacy arrears,” said Ms McCormack.

She made the comments after presenting figures to City Councillors in which it was confirmed the Council was recouping more money in key revenue streams compared with a year ago.

Last year, some €30.3 million in commercial rates was collected by the Council; this, she said, represented a 66% collection rate, which is up 4% (an extra €1.5 million) compared with the previous year.

The collection rate for rents was up by 1% to 78%, she said; and the rate of collection of housing loans had also increased by 3% to 81%.

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune