Letter: It is ratepayers in Belfast who will fund the £1.9 million cost of the new Irish language policy

A letter from Alan Chambers MLA:

This month Belfast City Council passed a new Irish language policy.

placeholder image — Unless there is a flourishing money tree in the grounds of Belfast City Hall, every penny in the council bank accounts is money contributed directly by ratepayers through their annual rates bill

I listened to Alliance councillor, Michael Long suggest to the media that the ratepayers would not actually be paying a penny more to implement the policy, that has been estimated to cost £1.9m in year one. This, he stated, was because council would be dipping into their cash reserves to meet the cost.

Unless the council has a flourishing money tree in the grounds of City Hall I think it would be factually correct to acknowledge that every penny that sits in the council bank accounts is money contributed directly by ratepayers through their annual rates bill. Reserves are accumulated by rates revenue raised by the annual rates bills for projects that have never happened or that have been delivered below the budgeted figure.

So while Councillor Long, at a stretch, may be correct to say that ratepayers will not be paying a penny more to implement the policy I am sure he would concede it has already been prepaid by Belfast ratepayers.

It has been a long tradition in local government that if a pending increase in rates bill is going to be unacceptably high, there is an option that an amount of reserves could be deployed to help keep the ratepayers bills within more acceptable limits. Perhaps if Councillor Long wants to help the housekeeping budgets of Belfast ratepayers he could propose that the £1.9m of reserves that is going to be used to deliver the new Irish language policy, instead be used to reduce future rates bills.

Ratepayers should not be fooled by smoke and mirror statements that the new policy won’t cost the ratepayers a penny more, the reason being they have already made their contribution to the building of council financial reserves over previous years. No matter how Councillor Long tries to frame it it is ultimately the purse and wallets of Belfast ratepayers that will finance the Irish language policy in the first year and in the years ahead.

Alan Chambers MLA, Ulster Unionist Party