Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish Mr. McCarthy the very best of luck in his new role.

Senator Victor Boyhan identified many of the key points I was going to mention. The NOAC does an incredible amount of good work. As Mr. McCarthy stated, 18 reports have been completed. I often wonder how many of the actions or recommendations made within those reports have been implemented by local authorities.

From my point of view, having served on the audit committee when it was first established, I found it to be a fantastic body in moving the local authority in the right direction. Equally, it gave guidance to the chief executive, but, again, many of the recommendations of the audit committee were not implemented.

I have looked at some of the reports. The report on commercial rates was one on which I would have always focused at local authority level. Has each local authority been sent copies of the reports or are NOAC reports sent directly to the relevant SPCs? The amount of information contained in the reports is incredible and can help.

I always find trying to make comparisons between local authorities almost impossible because they all have different interpretations of matters and different ways of presenting information, including on performance indicators. I would have been involved in planning and seen that one local authority presented information in a different way from another. It is time to standardise how information is presented across the 31 local authorities.

Going back to commercial rates, having served for 12 years on a local authority, it was eight years before I realised housing rent payments were written off in the budget process and that one could see the figure. I could not understand how collection rates were high in the case of social housing rent payments, yet in the case of commercial rates we were not doing what we should have been.

Another issue I had at local authority level was no one ever went out to collect money. Local authorities did not take a proactive approach, even though they the power to do so. They had a lean on commercial property which could not be sold until commercial rates were paid. Rates that were owed by an individual which could be dealt with in a year or two were manageable, but in year eight or nine they became unmanageable and the business closed. That had a knock-on effect. The local authority was not proactive in collecting the rates due.

I wish Mr. McCarthy well in his position. The NOAC does an incredible amount of work, but how much do the members of the local authorities know about it?