Mr. John McCarthy:

Back in the mists of time, when the fund was first established under the 1998 legislation, a policy decision was taken that motor tax would go into this fund on the basis that a significant proportion of the funding coming out on the other side would fund local authorities for a whole range of functions, including for roads related functions, which were then a part of our Department. That was 20 years ago, and we have gone through four, if not five, reconfigurations in the meantime. I was before this committee in March and made the point - and I believe Deputy Connolly made the same point the year before - that the fund, through those four or five reconfigurations, had outlived its usefulness in terms of the form it took because it had become very complex in terms of money going in and out for a range of functions which are now much more widely distributed across a range of Government Departments. We put a position to Government last year on this matter and it agreed that we should simplify things. In 2018 that means that motor tax no longer goes into the Local Government Fund but goes straight to the Exchequer and so will be accounted for in the general finance accounts in the same way as other taxation streams that go straight to the Exchequer are accounted for, and that the Local Government Fund, with effect from this year, will primarily become a fund from which local property tax is taken in and paid out to local authorities. In quantum terms, the revenue position and the expenditure position of the fund in 2017 would have been about €1.8 billion, as I mentioned in my opening statement. The effect of the streamlining and the changes that are introduced this year bring that back to about €600 million. In effect the quantum of turnover is approximately one third.