Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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I thank Mr. Callinan. I would like to put one or two questions to Mr. Enright of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. The question of off-road declarations has been well covered at this stage. The local government fund is relevant in this regard because car tax receipts go into it before they are allocated to the various councils throughout the country. There is a significant discrepancy between the amount of money that is given to each county on a per capita basis. That is understandable because a county like Leitrim will need a great deal more support per head of population than the counties in the Dublin region. South Dublin County Council receives the lowest per capita payment. This has been a matter of ongoing dispute between the council and those responsible for the local government fund. The most comparable county council is Fingal County Council, which received over €3 million more than South Dublin County Council when the 2012 allocation was made. The manner in which these decisions are arrived at is a source of frustration for those of us who study these issues. I can understand why the counties in the Dublin region receive much smaller per capita payments than some of the smaller rural counties. Given that there is a heavy demand for these moneys in the South Dublin County Council area, it is really frustrating that we always seem to come out worse than similar counties when these decisions are made. Like many other areas, our commercial base has been seriously undermined in recent years because of the economic downturn.