Waterford councillors have passed a budget for next year.
The meeting took over 9 hours and lasted into the early hours of this morning at City Hall.
Councillors met at 3pm yesterday afternoon to try to find savings to plug the deficit.
The controlling group on the local authority, a combination of Labour, Greens and some Independents, made several amendments to the budget put forward by the CEO Michael Walsh.
They recommended a 2.5 per cent rates increase instead of his 5 per cent.
They also proposed a range of cuts, such as to traffic maintenance and to the council's aerial photography budget but this was defeated.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and five Sinn Féin councillors voted against the proposals, while Sinn Féin's Declan Clune abstained.
The meeting was adjourned for an hour, only for no decision to take place when it resumed.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were then challenged to come up with an alternative budget.
After another adjournment, and then another, it was 11:30pm by the time councillors returned to the chamber.
All parties and Independents had met in the interim, and it resulted in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil finally proposing that they would accept the budget put forward some 8 hours earlier.
However, their proposal also featured a number of amendments; key among these was a tax rebate for the bottom 75 per cent of rates payers.
With the clock past midnight, the budget was accepted by 24 councillors from across almost all groups.
Five Sinn Féin members opposed it, while Declan Clune was by then absent from the chamber.
It means the council pact of Sinn Féin, Labour, Greens and Independents is no more, and talks to form a new pact will take place next week.
