Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy can include those the issues and I will ask the committee secretariat to clear it. I ask the Deputy to submit it today and we can deal with it next week. The individual has raised a complicated issue.

No. 2261C from IBEC dated 20 June 2019 encloses a position paper on the Local Government (Rates) Bill 2018 which includes some of IBEC’s key recommendations regarding the oversight of the commercial rates system. This will be of interest to members but the recommendations are ultimately policy matters. While the committee will forward this directly to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government for any action it may deem appropriate, we note that IBEC's correspondence states:

The collection of commercial rates must be improved [IBEC has included charts showing the collection rate] ... The revaluation process must be scrutinised including timelines and costs, with a view to expediting the process. The work of the Valuation Office and the Valuation Tribunal must be examined. Finally, we are calling for a full review of local government finance, including examination of replacing the commercial and domestic property taxes with a site or land value tax.

This is clearly a Government policy issue. The committee will, however, follow up on one aspect. The Valuation Office has been before the committee previously and it was included in our periodic report. We were very unhappy with the office's slow progress in doing its first valuation and even at this point, which is 15 years after the legislation was passed, it has not even got to some counties. The committee will write to the Valuation Office to ask for a full update on its work programme and which counties have been revalued. We will also ask for a summary of the outcome with regard to the percentages of rate payers who have experienced an increase or decrease or no significant change. The Valuation Office has those figures and has been quoting them extensively. We would like to see those figures on a county by county basis. We particularly want to find out if some counties have been revalued a second time while some counties have not been revalued a first time. The committee will want a detailed explanation and a detailed timetable. That issue was covered in an earlier periodic report and it is now incumbent on the committee to follow up our own previous periodic report. We shall not, however, get into the policy of the matter. Deputy Cassells might have an interest in this topic.