Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is an issue for another day, but I put it to Ms Graham that an annual rates bill of €60 million in respect of assets of €11 billion or €12 billion is very low. Any business man in the country would cut off his right arm to get such a low rates bill in respect of assets at that level of value. It would be very interesting to compare. A simple rule of thumb is that if one has a property worth €1 million, the annual rent could be 10% of that, which is €100,000. In the Valuation Office, rates valuations tend to be very close to approximately 25% of the annual commercial rent of the property. That is the statistic nationally. We will be interested to see how the €60 million relates to a valuation of €11 billion. We will analyse that because I would have thought that, based on assets of that value, the rates bill would be approximately €250 million. I am working on the basis of what the Valuation Office does.