The amount of money owed in arrears to Waterford City & County Council has been described as 'truly shocking'.
An annual audit report was presented to councillors at this month's Plenary meeting - where it came to light that the level of rents, rates and housing loan arrears grew by a further €2m up to €17.3m in 2020.
With this being the fourth successive year where arrears have risen, Fine Gael Councillor Damien Geoghegan described the report as 'shocking' given its 'staggering' figures.
"We are only talking about a very small minority of our tenants - but the amount of money that is owed to the Council is truly phenomenal. I mean, the number of accounts with arrears in excess of €10,000, has increased to 78 - and it represents €1.1m of arrears owed to the Council."
Cllr. Geoghegan believes this represents a failure on the part of the Council.
"I am sure that there's people out there who are struggling, daily and weekly, to pay their rents in the private sector, and in order to pay their mortgages. Then they see this, and the situation is getting worse year on year. We have a situation where if people pay their rents and their circumstances change, their rent goes down. If their circumstances change for the good, their rent goes up a little bit. To see those figures here in front of us, and the situation getting worse every year - its' a failure on the part of the Council, as far as I'm concerned."
Defence
In defence of the figures, Chief Finance Officer at Waterford Council, Bernard Pollard, outlined that 2020 was an 'exceptional' year, and he said the situation had 'improved'.
"You've got to put this in the context of what has happened in 2020. We had difficulty collecting money in any of our income streams. Nonetheless, on the rates side of things, the rates were recorded at a 67% collection rate. That would not be consistent with year-on-year. Even if you were to use the same methodology to calculate that in previous years, it would be around 79-80%."
