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

I agree entirely with Councillor Geoghegan's remarks on the budgets for municipal districts. He is 100% correct. I served for 17 years on a local authority which went from there being a very significant budget for a large urban centre being replaced by a one-sheet budget for a municipal district. I do not disagree with Mr. O'Sullivan that they are doing good works but they are not comparable to what they did before, in what was allowed for statutory powers. If Mr. O'Sullivan and the councillors are in agreement that there are failures, can we have a statement here that there will be a cohesive effort to change it? It is not good enough to acknowledge that something is wrong, we must see a return of statutory budgets for these areas whether it is the through the return of town councils or statutory budgets for what were the electoral areas.

Deputy O'Dowd and Senator Boyhan raised the acquisition of property and it was also addressed by Mr. O'Sullivan. It is having a considerable impact; it is the legacy of not having debt forgiveness. Not every county got into the land aggregation scheme. A point was raised about oversight for acquisition on a piece of land which elected members do not have. Some county managers might bring it to the corporate policy group to flag it, but others do not. In my own county, a 22 acre field was acquired for over €20 million. Nothing was ever built on this landlocked piece of land. Now something will happen through the activation scheme but the houses that will be built on that field are now coming in at over €100,000 per unit more expensive than any other house because the site acquisition cost is being factored into the delivery of the unit. The county council is going to the Department asking for money to build the houses and the Department is saying okay but when they see how much the field cost, it is factoring this price into each unit. The result is that we are getting fewer houses. That is the catch.

Who is the loser? It is not the Department or the Custom House, but the people on the social housing waiting list. The yield is only half of what could be produced. This is the key point and it needs to be addressed. This feeds into the role of central government. I accept the point made by Councillor Geoghegan, other councillors and Mr. McLoughlin on the 75% to 25% divide, but we need more involvement from central government. If the general purpose grant had been allowed to stand with the local property tax when it was introduced, we would have had enriched councils providing more services, but what was given with one hand was taken with the other and we only got parity.

Rates are a big issue and not only with regard to revaluation. After a decade of rates freezes and, in some case, rates reductions, we are getting back into the sphere and zone of rates increases. This week, we saw Fingal County Council increase its rates by 2%. It is under pressure as it has a huge number of people in the area, from Swords to Blanchardstown. It is a very rich council and it is under severe pressure. It will raise its rates by 2% this year, which will bring in €2.5 million extra income. It comes back to the key point of whether we are serious about the funding of local government by central government, or whether we will allow the funding model to be, as we are discussing, just on the shoulders of local authorities. County managers and councillors will not shirk the challenge. They will rise to the challenge of trying to provide the services they are required to provide for their people, but this lets central government off the hook. We do not have a local government system that is comparable with Europe or the United States. We need to be honest about this. The discussion here this morning should help.