Dublin City Council has said that it will reduce services and payroll costs to meet a projected €74m income shortfall.
Fintan Moran, Council finance department, has said early retirement, career breaks and a recruitment moratorium will be used to reduce this expenditure and there will be cuts across services.
Mr Moran has also said that commercial rates, which make up over one third of the council income, are expected to be down around 10% next year.
But the council's Finance Committee has heard that the Council does not have the power to reduce the working hours of employees whose wage bill makes up over 50% of expenditure.
Meanwhile, Tom Coffey of the Dublin City Centre Business Association has said the council could be losing a lot more than that.
Mr Coffey has said the number of vacant units had doubled since last November, but that this was being 'camouflaged' by retailers using empty units beside them to mount window displays.
Tom Coffey said he knew of some retailers who had not paid their rents in a year and their service charges in two years.
He continued that unless something was done about further losses caused by the College Green bus gate there would be redundancies among the city's 25,000 service workers in January.
