Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Doherty and again I apologise if the statement has not been made available to the Deputy or the committee. The equalisation fund is not contained in the original local property tax legislation or this Bill. It is a separate matter for the Department and Minister with responsibility for housing regarding how the equalisation fund is structured and how it operates. It is not contained in the local property tax legislation. I did not omit reference to it in my statement for the key reason that it is not contained in the legislation. Nor was it contained in the original legislation.

To deal with the Deputy's substantive point regarding the need to maintain fairness of treatment for all counties, particularly counties that depend on the equalisation fund, to make up the shortfall in their funding for important local services, I have made a commitment to maintain the equalisation approach. It will need to be funded through the Exchequer. My objective is to put this in place over a two year period commencing with the local authority budgetary periods in 2023 and into 2024. I will work out how that will operate with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. My intention is that no local authority or county would be worse off as a result of this change. The reason it will not happen in the approaching local authority budgetary cycle is because we need to allow the revaluation to happen first to understand what will be the impact on the revenue that various local authorities will receive. I am aware of the debates on evaluation of various funding methods with regard to how equalisation is maintained. This is a matter I will have to consider with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. I hope this will happen once a successful revaluation is implemented.