John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the officials for attending and for their presentations. My questions are in no particular order. I represent a Dublin constituency and as the witnesses are aware, there is a feeling in urban areas that they are disproportionately affected by property tax and how it is levied. From the figures provided in the table by the Revenue Commissioners today, I note the yield from Dublin city in 2016 was close to €17 million, in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown it was close to €45 million and in Fingal, it was just over €30 million. In my own area of South Dublin County Council, it was €26.5 million. As Dublin local authorities accounted for 40% of the overall local property tax take, it would be catastrophic if properties were revalued given that, according the figures cited today, values in Dublin have increased by more than 80% since 2012 and 2013, while nationally figures have gone up by 71%. I am taken by the fact that Revenue needs certain information quite quickly in terms of planning. During the meeting of 12 December, Revenue officials stated that no analysis has been carried out on the impact of property price increases since 2013 on local property tax liabilities and yield if a re-evaluation were to be carried out. No work has been done there. Given that policy decisions will need to be taken in 2018, does the Department intend to carry out such an analysis?

The Chairman and anyone who is a local authority member will appreciate my next question. We have talked about yield, values, and how the local property tax, LPT, is a consistent revenue yield for local authorities. That is true in part but any increase in the income they got and are getting from the LPT was offset by a reduction in grants coming from the Department of the environment. There was no significant net yield and this comes to the heart of the matter. One argument put forward by the former Minister, Mr. Phil Hogan, around the time of the introduction of the local property tax was that it would lead to a significant increase in services provided by local authorities. From my own experience of 17 years as a county councillor, I cannot testify to anysignificant increase in revenue leading to additional local government services being provided. The local property tax allowed for a reduction by each local authority of up to 15%. No figures have been provided, however, and we could do with the figures on what local authorities have done in that regard over the past four or five years. For instance, how many have reduced it year on year?

While South Dublin County Council reduced it every year by 15%, to my knowledge only a small number of local authorities reduced it by less than 15%. I do not know if any local authority increased it. I, therefore, would love to see an analysis of the exercise of the ability to increase or decrease it by 15% because very few councillors throughout the country will vote for an increase in a local tax, regardless of how it is packaged. When I was a local councillor, each year the chief executive presented to local councillors what the council could get in if the local property tax was increased by 15%. If the officials do not have to hand an analysis of this ability to increase or decrease the tax by 15%, perhaps they could provide it over the next few weeks. How effective has it been or have councils and public representatives essentially felt paralysed in the face of it? The Minister announced a review today but there seem to be mixed signals coming from the Government about this, or there were until today. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government spoke about a radical overhaul and seemed to imply that any new local property tax system would not be based on property value but on a range of other issues.

Another Deputy mentioned the next issue which is very close to my heart. Both the Chairman and I represent the same area and he knows the types of estates about which I am speaking. Older people who are reliant on the State pension are living beside someone in a terraced or a semi-detached house that is worth exactly the same, but the State pensioner is utterly reliant on the State pension while the person next door could have a significant salary, yet they are both paying the exact same property tax. The ability of an individual to pay was never recognised and this needs to be fed into the system. This is testified to by the amount of people struggling with it.

The figures for collection are testimony to the fact that the Revenue Commissioners are the best sheriff in the west. However, some counties are falling a little behind. The Dublin counties are 98% or 99% compliant. Those figures are very high. The same applies to some other counties. When we consider other urban areas such as Cork, Limerick and Waterford cities, well over 50% of the local property tax is being contributed by the urban areas. The officials might explain why some counties are 95% compliant rather than 98% or 99%. Are there data on that?