Galway City Council is calling on national Government to reexamine the outdated funding model for local authorities, to reduce significant gaps in service delivery and public infrastructure across the Galway Metropolitan Area.
The current funding model positions Galway City below every other local authority, urban and rural, in Ireland - despite the city being the largest urban centre in the Northern and Western region, a key driver of economic growth both regionally and nationally.
How are Local Authorities Funded?
Local authorities have two types of expenditure:
‘Capital’ or spending on infrastructure such as astro pitches, cycle routes, or community buildings for example, and
‘Services’ – local authorities deliver over 1,000 services from street cleaning, recycling centres, severe weather response, libraries, removal of abandoned vehicles, homeless supports, business grants and training, environmental monitoring and licencing, to burial ground maintenance. You can see the full list of services at https://Services.LocalGov.ie
Infrastructure or ‘Capital expenditure’ is mainly supported by national government funding, and ‘match funding’ from the local authority, financed by development levies, borrowings, property/land sales or other internal resources. Infrastructure projects may also be eligible for European funding.
Services are financed through a number of different sources including:
charges for goods and services;
state funding and programmes;
commercial rates; and the Local Government Fund (LGF ).
The Local Government Fund (LGF ) is a central government fund that partially funds the work of local authorities. This fund comes from three primary sources:
Local property tax revenues
Motor tax revenues (does not apply to Galway City Council )
Payments from the Exchequer (the Government’s central fund ) (does not apply to Galway City Council )
Every year, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage assesses how the Local Government Fund (LGF ) is distributed to local authorities around the country.
Motor tax and Payments from the Exchequer do not apply to Galway City Council – making LPT the primary source of funding from the Local Government Fund for the city.
LPT is collected nationally by Revenue, and distributed back to local authorities based on ‘weightings’ including:
Population - 10%
Area - 35%
Deprivation levels - 20%
Local Authority locally raised income - 27.5%
Achievement of National Policy Priorities - 7.5%
These simplistic weightings treat Galway as a relatively small geographically area, with a population of 84,000 people.
They do not recognise a student population of over 30,000 and visitor numbers of over 2.4million people annually, which put pressure on public infrastructure and services that support both residents and visitors. For example, The Town Hall Theatre, Leisureland, community centres and pitches are all heavily subsidised by income raised locally.
Where area is used as a metric – Galway’s relatively compact size doesn’t reflect the volumes of traffic on urban roads in the city, for those travelling into Galway as a major regional economic, education and employment hub – or passing through the city into the region.
Using these weightings, every local authority is entitled to receive a minimum amount of funding under the LPT allocation process, known as the ‘Baseline’.
Galway City will generate €10,339,596 in LPT locally in 2026.
However, Galway City Council’s baseline was set for 2026 at €5,099,723 – the lowest of all 31 local authorities in the country.
Galway City retains €8,304,998 of the €10m, meaning 20% of Local Property Tax paid by residents in the city is effectively being invested in other local authorities nationwide, to Galway City’s detriment.
Elected Members and Management of Galway City Council are calling on national government to address this imbalance, to avoid impacts on services and infrastructure delivery in areas including housing, street cleaning, parks, playgrounds, transport, arts and culture.
The Council is seeking a ‘baseline’ funding figure that reflects the city’s resident and student population, and also the number of people who travel into Galway each day for employment, education, healthcare, retail, tourism and public services.
Mayor of the City of Galway, Cllr Helen Ogbu said Galway City is operating on a financial platform behind every local authority in the country, including rural counties of Longford, Roscommon and Leitrim.
“It is extremely challenging for public representatives and staff of Galway City Council to deliver the level of services required by a thriving, growing, regional city, when national funding, and funding raised locally through Local Property Tax, is not allocated in a way that reflects Galway’s status or service requirements. “We are asking national Government to recognise Galway City’s contribution to the region, and the country, and to provide a fairer, more sustainable funding basis for essential local services and capital projects”.
Leonard Cleary, Chief Executive, Galway City Council, said Galway City is a key growth centre, supporting national and regional development policy.
“However, simplistic weightings in the national funding models do not reflect this, resulting in a significant under weighting relative to other neighbouring local authorities, including Clare and Limerick. Galway is geographically compact, but it operates as a much larger urban and regional centre for employment, transport, education, homeless services, housing, arts and culture, healthcare and tourism.
“Working with the Elected Members, we will continue to raise this issue with national government. An equitable funding model is essential for both service delivery, capital investment and for the Council’s ability to co-finance development required to deliver obligations set out at national level,” he concluded.
