Noel Coonan (Tipperary North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. I extend a welcome to the witnesses and thank them for their thought provoking presentation. Having served with many of them - particularly the director, Mr. Tom Ryan - I know that he is very good at provoking discussion and he is even better at responding to provocation. There is a strong Tipperary presence and I am particularly interested in the proceedings from that point of view. We are getting the full whack of the effect of local government reform as Tipperary is being amalgamated and six districts are being eliminated. I welcome the comments of the president, Councillor Willie Callaghan, that there are some positives in the Bill but it does not go far enough. He believes in the spirit of the reform. He said that many financial powers were being removed from local authorities. Could he elaborate on that point? I would have thought the Bill proposed to enhance local government by giving it a genuine base for funding which determines the level of services and, accordingly, the power of a local authority.

On the first amendment proposed to section 29 on page 36, could Councillor Moylan elaborate a little more on the point? We already have such a system. Having served on a local authority that shared the lowest rate in the country, I remember there was always a battle between one of the local authorities in Donegal and Templemore in that regard. We had it for many years in Tipperary. It always created a problem locally in that there was antagonism among towns in Tipperary about rates. Is there not a danger of creating difficulty by saying that the rate should not go below the county rate? Could Councillor Moylan expand on the proposal to increase the municipal rate to 10%?

I do not wish to dwell too much on the point made by Councillor McCarthy on section 36 and different tiers of government, starting with town commissions. In Tipperary, one of the largest towns, namely, Roscrea, had no municipal authority of any description - neither a town commission, a town council or anything else. That was the fault of the previous local government regime in that some towns had a town council or town commission and many others did not have. Some counties did not have any tiers of local government at all. Could Ms McCarthy elaborate a little on the matter?

Deputy Stanley quoted extensively at the previous meeting from the submission by the Association of Municipal Authorities in Ireland, AMAI. It is a good sign that he is reading and learning from it. He referred to Northern Ireland. In some instances he referred to the good things about Northern Ireland, but he condemned what the Bill contains about Northern Ireland. Some people speak out of both sides of their mouth. He did not refer to the fact that a significant local property tax has been imposed in the North of Ireland but Sinn Féin is absolutely opposed to it in this country. What are the views of witnesses on the local property tax? Does it not allow local authorities to finance local government? I thank the witnesses for attending and for their thought-provoking presentation.