Rates in Co Cavan are set to increase by 10% following the adoption of Budget 2025 by members at a special budget meeting on Friday. It is the first time in a decade that rates have been increased in the county. The meeting heard the increase will yield €1.8M for the local authority, enabling it to ringfence €1.5M for its capital investment programme and an additional €300,000 to provide a balanced budget across all services. The Budget was proposed by Fianna Fáil's Cllr John Paul Feeley and seconded by Fine Gael's Cllr Winston Bennett. There were some members that said they couldn't agree with an increase especially at a time that some businesses were struggling to keep the doors open.
Eoin Doyle, Chief Executive of Cavan County Council says the Council's annual rate of valuation is one of the lowest in the country, and with the proposed increase, Cavan County Council would continue to have one of the lowest rates particularly when compared with counties of similar size and stature to Cavan. He also said it was worth noting that approximately 91% of our rates customers have rates warrants less than €10,000, and are in a position to avail of the Small Business Rates Incentive Scheme of 5% discount for payments on or before the 31 October 2025. In 2024 Cavan County Council has a budget of €91.5m, in 2025 that figure is €106m, an increase of €14.5m on the previous year.
Speaking to Northern Sound, Cllr JP Feeley said that despite concerns which were voiced, the budget received unanimous support from all council representatives. He said; "It's one of the lowest in the entire country and is lower than all of our adjoining counties apart from Westmeath. Even allowing for the increase that has been made, it remains substantially lower than all of those counties and I think that's important to acknowledge as well. We are not in the business of putting an additional burden on anyone's shoulders more than we have to, and we are minimising that as much as we can. We are conscious that nobody wants to be paying larger bills, there's substantial increase in cost that businesses and individuals are facing and we are trying to absorb as much of that as we can."
