Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

This is something I have examined, particularly in Wicklow. Seven or eight other local authorities are affected by this issue. The baseline has not been reviewed for many years. Wicklow is the one I am most familiar with, as will Senator Casey.

By population, we are well below what the baseline figure should be. By population growth over the past ten years or so, we are way below where we should be. Another way to measure this is by county area, which I know is not a good metric. There was a request for the local authorities to make submissions to review the baselines. I do not know whether that went to the Minister's Department or to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but we will have to look at that. There are local authorities that will bring in a higher local property tax rate than they had under their baseline. This is a complex matter. I know the equalisation would be gone but there is the self-funding element. Some local authority members will agree to raise local property tax because they want to provide services. However, it will not hugely increase the discretionary spend of local authorities. Some councillors are progressive and brave enough to take the responsibility for raising revenue at local level each year. Some parties consistently seek to reduce that funding but still go to the top of the queue when they want to spend that funding. However, we have councillors who take responsibility, and face down the flak that comes with it, to provide local services, which is a really important part of local government. I have four scenarios for Wicklow. I will not go into the detail of them but I would appreciate the opportunity to go through the Wicklow scenario with the Minister in finer detail to show him that even though we are looking at a potential increase of perhaps €2.4 million with the 2013 housing brought into it, when you go through the complexity of how the allocation is spent or divided out, the local authority will still end up with only €400,000 extra. We need to support councillors who make these decisions to raise property tax to provide local services without penalising them by almost an accountancy-style movement of figures. I will leave it at that but I would like the opportunity to talk further to the Minister about this as well as to the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien.