Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I know many arguments are made to the effect that some parts of the country are different from others in terms of the rates base and so on. In fact, if we consider the gross expenditure and carry out a comparison between all local authorities, the counties with growing populations are always at the bottom of the list in terms of the amount of spend per head. There is a direct impact on the baselines. Essentially, the primary work done on the baselines was done under the needs and resources model in 1999 and 2000. We are still using the 1996 census of population. No increase in population has been counted in terms of the needs of certain local authorities. Is that the kind of thing we can expect to see the reports addressing?