Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I hope so. Moving on to chapter four on the funding of local government, one of the things that really frustrates people is how their money is spent. It is not the payment of tax, rather how it is spent. Ask any resident in this country who pays property tax their view on what they expected to get, what they thought they would get and what they actually got. I know the value of the service of local government. I spent 17 years on a council. The reason I ask is because when the precursor to the LPT, the household charge, was introduced, every single house in this country received a glossy leaflet through the door encouraging them to pay the €100, as it was at that time. In bulletpoint form, it set out where that money was going. There were references to parks, community facilities and estate maintenance. Those were the bulletpoints highlighted to encourage people to pay this charge when the county councils were collecting it. Of course, we saw what happened. They did not collect it.

People in most towns have no parks and have to pay another €100 on top of their LPT to their local residents' association to pay for the cutting of grass in their estate. Ask those people what their memory is of the promise on that leaflet. When the LPT comes in and the collection is the guts of 100% - we had Mr. Cody before the committee from Revenue, which is doing a fine job in that respect as it brings in nearly €500 million a year - one would think that local government would be enhanced rather than impoverished. One would think that it would be able to provide the services that were mentioned in that leaflet some years ago. One would think it would make the critical difference in providing the type of community facilities on the ground level that would actually make a difference, as opposed to maintaining the nuts, bolts and wages of just keeping the county councils on the go.

Low and behold, when we looked at those budgets the year the LPT was introduced, most councils were no better off. They were no worse off, but they were no better off. The general purpose grant, as the witness outlined, disappeared. The LPT, which the households were paying themselves, just subbed in for it. Residents were wondering where their LPT is going. We could only say that it was going into the income side of things. There was no scenario in which county councils actually had more money because what was given with one hand was taken away with another.

As we can see in the figures, funding to councils in this country went down by 70% in that period from 2007 to 2014. Even leaving aside the transfer of powers in some aspects, it is massively underfunded. Can the witness understand people's frustration and can he explain that little movement to me? When the LPT came in, we were no better off in providing the services that people expect and require in this country.