Louth County Council has over €54.5 million in outstanding Development Levies on its books

Louth County Council has over €54.5 million in outstanding Development Levies on its books the Dundalk Democrat can exclusively reveal.

Information obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) showed that over €23.5 million of the total came from the eight years between 2014 and September this year, with the remainder of over €31 million coming from before 2014.

Development Levies are charged on new building developments within the county with the money collected used to fund public infrastructure and services.

Levies are spent according to the Development Contribution Scheme set out by the Council.

The FOI also notes that Development Levies are invoiced when commencement notices are submitted and that not all commencement notices are acted upon, which would mean that the €54.5 million total would include an element of these invoices.

Just over €14 million is left outstanding from the last five full years 2017 - 2021, while €4,200,987 was outstanding for 2022 as of September this year, the figures reveal.

The figures for 2017 - 2021 breakdown as follows; €1,450,253 outstanding in 2017; €5,227,389 outstanding in 2018; €916,620 outstanding in 2019; €4,533,049 outstanding in 2020 and €1,946,650 outstanding in 2021.

According to the FOI, a total of 34 cases have been referred for legal action by the council in respect of outstanding levies and there have been eight judgements.

It also confirmed that there were no enforcement notices issued on outstanding levies as of September this year.

Meanwhile, the figures also reveal that the council collected €15,977,555 in levies (inclusive of Irish Water Levies) between 2017 to 2021 and a further €3,061,169 in the first nine months of 2022.

A breakdown of these figures shows €2,918,268 was paid in 2017; €3,402,703 was paid in 2018; €3,060,895 was paid in 2019; €3,199,001 was paid in 2020 and €3,396,686 was paid in 2021.

As part of the FOI request the Democrat also asked for a breakdown of each individual case along with the names of the developers but was refused because “Customer names are commercially sensitive and personal information.”

Louth County Council did not respond to a request for comment at the time of the paper going to print.