Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will start where Ms Quin finished, on the elected mayor. As she will be aware, the consultation is out there. It will be a matter for the local authorities.

I agree with Ms Quin that there is no point in having a figurehead of a mayor for Dublin if the office does not have the powers to go with it. It would only be another office and another bureaucratic facility.

The theory was that 80% of the local property tax raised would be spent locally. In anything, there is a bedding in period. It is not easy to change a system, from black to white, in one fell swoop. I can see that there are reasons for deferral. It is a question we will keep on the agenda because that is the theory behind the local property tax. The deferral is until 2015. That is what has been stated so far. It is not an ongoing and rolling deferral. That is my understanding of it but we will question it further.

I do not know whether Ms Quin raised something else, but we have her submission and the other ones that were presented by the other two organisations earlier.

On commercial rates, as I stated to IBEC earlier, there is now more leeway to help businesses at local authority level because heretofore local members did not have a facility to reduce or increase the rates by 15%. That provision now exists. If there is the wherewithal in counties, it is a power of the local authority.

Co-ordination is an issue between businesses and local authorities. With the chamber, the local development companies and the enterprise board being more integrated, the process will be more transparent. It will drive businesses in each county that the responsibility is with the county as well rather than having the enterprise boards responsible to Enterprise Ireland and one having to spend X amount of money, for example.

This is a good move which will lead to greater transparency. It was either the representatives from Chambers Ireland or IBEC who inquired as to whether the offices to which I refer would be hidden away at the back of local authority offices. I can only speak from experience in this regard and inform the committee that the enterprise board in south Dublin is very much to the fore. I hope this will be replicated throughout the remaining counties and that people will know, from the off, where to find the relevant offices. They often do not know the location of these offices.