Mr. John Prendergast:

I will put it in a slightly different context.

Generally speaking small retailers such as us are high street-based and town centre-based serving local established older communities. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has one of the highest on-street car parking charges in the country at €3.60 an hour. One gets ten minutes free and the traffic wardens are extremely aggressive. Three miles up the road in Carrickmines one finds 5,000 car parking spaces and the businesses based there get ten years rates free. What is fair about this? It is not necessarily about taxing a company such as Tesco more; it is about more equitable distribution of the rates. Major multinationals in out-of-town centres do not pay rates while small and medium enterprises in town centres pay very high rates and their customers are highly taxed. There is a dichotomy.