John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is where the problem lies. There is no argument there. As Mr. O’Sullivan said, it is a technical exercise and analysis. The difficulty is that we are living in extraordinary economic times and these businesses cannot pay. I know that. When there is a 1025% increase for a clothes shop that has seen its footfall decrease by 50% there is a problem. There is a problem for Government generally. When I raised this before in committee I said we should look at the rates arrears in this country, the amounts that have been written off. When I asked the Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government how it works from one local authority to another, there was not much of a response. It seems to be an arbitrary, subjective issue within local authorities as to who writes off, or how they write off, particular arrears in different rateable local authorities. There are very significant issues there.

At the meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform an undertaking was given to work with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to examine the legislation to see if some facilitation can be made for businesses that are in trouble and cannot sustain the kinds of increase that will result from the revaluation process. I do not want to say too much more than that because the specifics of this have not been nailed down. None of us can ignore the reality on the ground when it comes to the businesses about which we are speaking.

The technical exercise of analysis is flawed because it does not take into account ability to pay and in many cases there is no ability to pay for some of these businesses, even though we are looking at a system that has been updated from 1988. When an assembled group of businesses and retailers in Dungarvan recently asked one of Mr. O’Sullivan’s employees why they were going to be asked to pay these increases his response was, “Because you are the ones that are left.” It was an unfortunate comment. I understand why someone would say that because in many cases these are the businesses that have survived, they have cut their cloth and let employees go but they feel victimised by Government. They think what is happening is unreal considering what has happened to their businesses and the potential down the road.

A motion was sent through the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on impact assessments and I received a very good response in which the Department indicated that it will conduct an impact analysis in Waterford, which is great news. It mentioned that post-revaluation impact analyses have been carried out in South Dublin, Fingal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Dublin is a different economy from Waterford, as we all know. Is the Valuation Office involved in that post-revaluation impact analysis?