Albert Dolan (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank everyone from the Department for housing and all the representatives for being with us here today. I have a few questions I will run through. I will appreciate their support in answering and getting through them quickly because the time goes quickly. First, and it is something that was raised earlier, Galway County Council is incredibly underfunded, similar to what Deputy Neville said about Kildare. A few years ago, Galway County Council received a presentation from Dr. Gerard Turley and Mr. Stephen McNena in which they proposed a new way of doing the equalisation model. Essentially what happens now is that the local property tax is sent back up to the Department to a central fund where it is equalised and separated out. The reality is that it is not very equal. It is not serving the constituents in Galway. Some counties are disproportionately benefitting compared with other counties. It is not an equal system on a per capita basis anyway. Maybe that is not the right way, either. Has any consideration been given at a Department level to a new way of funding local authorities?