BY ENDA CUNNINGHAM

Galway City Council is currently involved in court proceedings to recoup a total of more than €1.3 million in unpaid building levies from developers – however, a Galway City Tribune investigation has uncovered time lags of up to three years before the local authority moved to call in the debts.

And embarrassingly, the Council could stand to lose out on almost half a million euro in one particular case because of a simple ‘typo’ – that case is destined for a costly High Court battle.

Our extensive investigation also shows the City Council was continuing to give developers ‘leeway’ on their development contributions when the property market collapsed three years ago, although this has been rejected by officials.

It also provides an insight into the financial pain being suffered by builders, as they scrambled to renegotiate payments and instalments, as demand for homes dried up from the middle of 2007.

Our revelations are set to incense elected councillors, who, in the coming months, will be attempting to balance a Budget for 2011 – at a time when cutbacks are being imposed in areas such as road and park maintenance and for Leisureland and the Town Hall.

At the moment, the Council is involved in legal proceedings to recoup a total of €1.3m from some of the Galway property boom’s biggest developers, including Stephen Harris, Bernard McKeon, Joe McNamara, John Curley, Iggy Foy and Leo Maher.

However, the legal actions are only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ – in total, the City Council is owed well over €5m in unpaid levies in relation to almost 70 sites around town.

The single biggest debt relates to the abandoned Crown Square development in Mervue – headed up by Padraic Rhatigan of JJ Rhatigan and Walter King of GK Developments – where almost €2.1m is owed.

And in one particularly embarrassing case for the Council, a typographical error on a grant of planning permission for an estate with 120 homes in Doughiska suggested levies were only due on 28 apartments, as opposed to the entire estate – the row over almost €470,000 is set for the High Court.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune