Visitor Levy on Paid Overnight Accommodation: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-24 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I am wholly opposed to this because of my experience of what it actually means in this city. The reason for my opposition is because Dublin City Council is, I regret to say, a bit of a financial disaster area. It is spending its huge budget of €1.6 billion every year. Last year, in a cynical deal designed to get Fine Gael the lord mayorship, it decided that it would increase local property tax by 15% in the context of the discretionary reduction that councillors are allowed to use. Right across the entire area of its functions, the council seems to be failing. The streets are in a very poor state of repair. The amount of additional social housing being provided by Dublin City Council is very poor. The state of repair of much of their existing housing stock is very poor. On top of that is the almost incredible news that the council's offices on Wood Quay, which were erected in very controversial circumstances 30 years ago, are to be demolished. The reason they are be demolished is, we are told, that somebody has worked out that it would cost €500 million to make them compliant with EU targets for zero-emission buildings. Somebody invented that figure, which has been put out there to justify what the council intend to do instead of making its offices habitable. The council decided to buy a half-completed structure at a derelict site at Camden Yard on Kevin Street approximately half a mile from its existing offices and build new offices there. In addition, it proposes to provide workspace for 2,800 employees at its new offices in circumstances where many of those who observe what happens in the existing offices wonder how many of the staff actually work from home at any given time. That is the way Dublin City Council is working - or not working. Even more incredible is the council's attention to spent €600 million on this new town hall. It will also have to spend God only knows what on the redevelopment of the Wood Quay site. Even demolishing it will cost many millions. Building anything new there will cost even more. Then we will be back to what happens to the remains of the Viking settlement underneath it. All of this has been left up in the air. We are told that €10 million euro is going to be spent between now and opening of the new building in refurbishing the old building the council has committed to demolish. What kind of people are those involved that they think they can get away with spending more than €500 million on new offices for themselves because they say that it would cost €500 million to make their existing offices compliant with European climate emissions targets? I find all of this grotesque. I look the amount of dereliction across Dublin city. I look at the failure of Dublin City Council to enforce the laws in relation to dereliction. Some of the properties it owns are derelict. Some of those it has acquired are derelict. I look at the council's failure to engage in proper constructive planning in the city centre, and then I am asked to believe that all of this makes economic sense. The levy - and it depends on whether it will be €1, €2, €3, €5 or €10 per bed per night in Dublin - is supposed to ensure, in Senator Fitzpatrick's terms, that visitors pay for the upkeep of the city they are visiting. They are already paying for it in vast sums just as the people who go to Killarney or Tralee pay for the viability of what happens there. Just take them out of the equation and see who is paying for what. Tell the hoteliers in Killarney, Tralee or wherever that their customers are not paying for what happens in those places. We are supposed to believe that tourists are somehow freeloading in Dublin, a place where hotel prices are already massive. Do we want to have this kind of additional charge made to create a fund which, as Senator Fitzpatrick states, has to be ring-fenced? I do not believe in this ring-fenced nonsense. I know what will happen. Just like the local property tax, it will be taken into account in the annual disbursement of funds by the Custom House to the various local authorities. The case for this has not been made. The case for an additional taxation measure of this kind being handed to local authorities has not been made. The real kernel of the problem with local government is that we do not have local democracy. Rather, we have local administration. Councillors, to whom Senator Fitzpatrick paid such a generous tribute, are, in fact, not really in charge of the activities of Dublin City Council. Unless and until we radically change our local democracy laws, measures such as this to create additional revenue streams are unjustified and counterproductive and proceed on the basis of the untrue assertion that tourists do not contribute to the local economy on which Dublin City Council depends. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-24