Businesses have narrowly voted to keep Dublin Town after a divisive scrap over its future

But the group fighting the city centre-improvement scheme says it will ‘intensify’ its campaign.

By Conor McMahon Deputy editor, Fora

BUSINESSES IN DUBLIN city centre narrowly voted to retain the capital’s Business Improvement District (BID) levy for the next five years after a bitter row over the future of the scheme.

A number of traders that form part of BID, which is marketed as Dublin Town, had campaigned to scrap the initiative.

In a ballot count last night, 843 businesses voted to renew Dublin Town for the next five years while 715 voted for its abolition. Around 3,000 businesses were eligible to vote.

The last plebiscite in 2012 saw nearly 1,100 businesses vote to continue the initiative, while 500 wanted to abolish it at the time.

Reacting to yesterday’s result, Dublin Town said in a statement, “We note the endorsement provided by the business community in the democratic vote to renew Dublin Town for a further five-year term.”

A spokesman for the ‘No to BID’ campaign told Fora: ”We plan to regroup, but from here the campaign will intensify as we will look for Dublin Town to disband.”

Source: Lorcan O'Connor/Twitter

Row

The not-for-profit Dublin BID was set up 10 years ago with the task of representing and promoting businesses in the city centre.

As well as cleaning graffiti off buildings, it runs promotional initiatives like food festival ‘Dine in Dublin’. It’s also responsible for organising the city’s annual Christmas lights.

All businesses in the BID catchment area are automatic members of the scheme. In addition to the normal commercial rates paid to Dublin City Council, they must pay a levy equal to 5% of their rates bill to support the running of Dublin Town.

‘No to BID’ was fronted by independent councillor Mannix Flynn and the head of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, Adrian Cummins, who both received legal letters over their public criticism of the scheme.

The group has variously claimed to have between 500 and 800 members.

As previously explained by this website, the for and against sides were at odds over even the basic grounds of argument ahead of the vote, with claims and counter-claims flying between the two camps.

‘No to BID’ said it is concerned by the fact that the five-year vote is administered by Dublin City Council. It had previously claimed that a number of ballot papers went missing. The council said it was aware of a “relatively small” number of missing ballots.

Reacting to yesterday’s ballot result, Labour councillor Dermot Lacey tweeted that there had been “misinformation” peddled by the ‘no’ side.

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