Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator for the points he made. I also thank him for his recognition of the value of ensuring those 80,000 homes that have been built and purchased since 2013 come into the perimeter of this tax. It is important once we do this revaluation that we are never in this place again. It raises an important issue of fairness and within local authorities, as the Senator said, it raises a demanding issue that local authority councillors are supplying services to an increasing number of homes and those homes are not creating the revenue the local authorities need to provide the additional services. The Senator would expect I would advocate the case for this Bill but an important part of it is making a change to ensure in future when a new home is built and purchased it will always enter the valuation perimeter from the following November. It means the issue the Senator raised, if and when this Bill is passed, should not happen again.

There has been much focus on the baseline issue in this committee. All I can say at this point is I appreciate the importance of the review under way with regard to the future of the baseline and what that means for different local authorities. I will certainly pass on the views of the committee to the Minister, Deputy O’Brien.

Regarding the different points the Senator made on when decisions are made, the Revenue Commissioners have indicated to me that they believe there is an opportunity to move the notification date for local adjustment factor, LAF, decisions by local authorities out to the middle of October. I understand at the moment that is the middle of September and that is for non-valuation years. At this point the Revenue Commissioners have indicated to me they are not in a position to offer more flexibility beyond that point if the arrangements we have regarding local property tax are to be implemented on time.

The Senator also touched on how the decision is made. I accept, in particular, for local authorities that might decide to increase the value of local property tax, if they make that decision, we should at least consider if that is a decision that has to be made again and again. That is a decision purely for the Minister, Deputy O’Brien but it is something he and I have discussed. While it will not be possible in the coming year to deal with that because we will have our hands full implementing the new valuation, it is an important point for the future in terms of how we integrate the decision point of this tax into the decision-making timetable of local authorities and whether this is a decision that needs to be made year after year. That was an interesting point.

The Senator asked if we were to understand how the money is spent within discrete local authority areas what the consequences of that would be. I agree with him that we should not get into a debate where we begin to talk about money that is raised in one part of a local authority area and spent in another or revenue that is raised in one part of a local authority area and whether it should be spent in another part of a local authority area. That is not a productive debate to enter into. Local authority areas in Ireland are mostly compact areas or if they are not, in most case they are configured on county boundaries. That is the appropriate point for decision making. Our councillors decide what kinds of projects they want to support and they should do it on a county-wide basis, and that is the way it should be kept.