Ms Gina Quin:

I thank the Chairman and the rest of the committee members for allowing us to come in and speak to them. We submitted a document and I am aware the committee is taking that as read.

There are three areas on which I will focus in my brief few words. First, the Dublin chamber, on behalf of its 1,300 member companies with 300,000 employees in the greater Dublin area, is supportive of the work that continues to be done in the area of local government efficiency. I sat on the committee that looked specifically at local government efficiency in the Dublin area. Our major concern in this area is the cost of services to business. When we look at the funding that has been provided by businesses to local authorities over recent years, we see that, as a percentage of local authority funding, businesses are paying 46% of the total funds of local authorities in the Dublin area, whereas in 2008, they were paying 38% of them. There has been a significant increase in the proportion of moneys going into local authority funding from businesses. We would be concerned about that escalation, particularly given that it has happened over the five years of the worst recession in many decades in this country.

We fully support local government efficiency. We want to see local government become more effective and more efficient. We want to see more consolidation of services and less duplication. We are also interested in seeing local authorities really embrace outsourcing as a means of gaining that efficiency because not only does it help them to be more efficient but it also provides an opportunity for the private sector.

The second area I wanted to mention is the local property tax. This is something for which the Dublin chamber has campaigned for many years. We are glad to see it introduced We believe that it brings a balance to the taxation for local services, between the domestic householder and the businesses. To date, businesses have been paying - and householders have not been paying - a direct local tax. The property tax addresses that.

However, we have always campaigned for a local property tax to be put in place on the basis that taxes collected locally are spent locally and we have a major concern, particularly following a parliamentary question asked by Deputy Barry Cowen in recent times, that the Minister has stepped back from an earlier commitment that 80% of the taxes raised locally would be held within that local authority and spent on services for the citizens and businesses within that local area. The Minister intends to defer that particular condition of the collection of taxes. Instead, as I understand it, taxes will go into one central pot. We are looking for clarification from the Minister's office to see whether that is simply a one-year deferral or a more permanent development where taxes collected locally will not be spent locally, which we see as a retrograde step. It is particularly important that we get clarification of this as we head into a new calendar year in which there will be local elections. We all are in favour of tightening the link between local representatives and the citizens who vote them into office.

The committee will not be surprised that the third area I want to raise is one close to the Dublin chamber's heart, that is, the issue of an elected mayor for Dublin. When I joined the chamber in 2001, the chamber was already campaigning for an elected executive mayor for the Dublin area. We do this for good reason. The global position is that city regions are driving national economies. There is strong evidence to support our belief that Dublin is a significant driver of the national economy. We believe that Dublin, therefore, needs to be run in the most efficient and effective way. Around the world, in cities such as London, New York and Chicago, executive mayors are key to driving the economies in those city regions and the benefits that those city regions accrue for the rest of the economy around them.

We are looking for an elected mayor who can be a strong voice for the Dublin region, who can promote the Dublin region internationally and who can ensure that local services across the four local authority areas in Dublin are delivered efficiently and effectively, that there is strong co-operation and shared objectives and that those local authorities are held accountable. We have debated this issue over many years with the member businesses of the chamber. We are clear that we will only support an elected mayor if it is a mayor who has executive powers. We are not interested in another layer of bureaucracy. We are not interested in a mere figurehead. We must have executive powers with that office.