Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Motor tax was ring-fenced in 1997 and was to go into the local government fund. There have obviously been changes relating to local property tax and a phasing out of that over the last few years. I am not sure that there is even such a thing as a local government fund now. The Chairman has mentioned a number of different streams of funding to local authorities in addition to those generated locally. About five years ago, the Council of Europe came to look at how Ireland funded its local authorities and went away having made no sense of it. That speaks volumes. How can there be transparency when one cannot make sense of who does what? It would be useful to ask the Department to provide a note on the progression of how local authorities are funded and what elements fund them.