Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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We are now getting down to the core point. I did not mention the legislation in my first question. I said that LPT funded the retained portion by local authorities and the equalisation fund. The policy change, which as the Minister said is not included in the legislation but is central to what we are discussing, is that the tax will be retained by local authorities but the equalisation fund will be paid by the Exchequer. If the equalisation fund remains the same as it was last year, it will be €133 million. However, is it not the case that when properties are revalued in many local authorities, despite the fact that residents will be paying a higher rate of local LPT, many of those local authorities will not benefit because the equalisation fund contribution to local authorities will just be reduced?

The second point is that the baseline is crucial. If we have a baseline based on what a local authority received in 2014, that will not be fair to those 20 counties that require support from the equalisation fund. Those 20 counties will not be allowed to grow the services they provide because they will be in a system where they are frozen at a certain point in time.