Mr. Tim Fenn:

Local authority rates have always been a bugbear for us. People have been waiting on their revaluation for many years after the introduction of the new Act. Despite the Acts of 2001 and 2015, large parts of the country have not yet been revalued. We in the Irish Hotels Federation have always looked for fair valuation for everybody. It is easier to pay rates if one believes them to be fair. The difficulty with our particular industry is that many businesses do not have an open market rentable value from which to work out what the fair value should be. For many years, and in the difficult years in particular, hotels were paying rates that could amount to €300,000 or even €600,000 before even opening their front doors. When one wonders about hotel pricing, it must be remembered that hotels are underpinned by a very expensive business model. While the Valuation Office is doing its level best to roll out a fair valuation system, another issue, that of local government efficiency, has arisen in the meantime. Some local authorities have not been as successful as they might have been in collecting rates because businesses have been unable to pay them. The business model, therefore, is not fulfilling their needs. All of the sudden, then, a question mark appears over who is paying for what. Are any services coming out of this? The guy paying €400,000 or €500,000 in local authority rates may not even be able to get someone to come to fix a pothole outside his front gate. That is the aggravating factor because when people pay for a service, they expect to get it, and it is hoped they believe or try to make sure that what they are paying is fair. Our industry has been hugely aggravated by the fact that we never believed that our rates bills were fair. Since revaluation has come on stream in different local authority areas, hotels have enjoyed decreases of up to 30% or higher in their rates bills.