Mayo County Council has received no correspondence from Irish Water demanding the payment of levies collected by the council from developers as contributions towards water and sewerage works. Sinn Fein Cllr Gerry Murray raised the potential of the utility company demanding the levies at Monday’s meeting of the council, following a report in a national newspaper on Sunday. Cllr Murray asked what would be the financial consequences to the council if such levies were demanded by Irish Water.
His fellow Sinn Fein councillor Rose Conway Walsh said: “I think it’s a bit rich that Irish Water would try to claim that money, seeing as they have claimed so many millions of motor tax money. So if we were to apply the same thing, we would be looking for them to give our motor tax money back so we can use it on our roads.”
Head of finance for the council, Peter Duggan, responded to the query saying: “We haven’t received any correspondence from Irish Water demanding any levies. To put it in context, the amount of levies we had on hand when Irish Water took over was €13,000 roughly, because we had applied all the levies we had collected to schemes that we had been working on. I haven’t got any correspondence from them demanding payments from them.”
The chief executive of Mayo County Council, Peter Hynes, added: “Just for clarity, there are ongoing discussions around the transfer of assets, the valuation of assets, the transfer of loans and liabilities to Irish Water, and when they are at a stage when there is some clarity emerging, we will advise the councillors, but there is no specific demand for the reimbursement of levies from this council, that we are aware of.”
