Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I draw the issue of management companies to the attention of the Minister and his officials. Most of the many thousands of apartments and new housing developments in the greater Dublin region and most towns and cities around the country are subject to management companies which, typically, have charges of €350 to approximately €3,000 per year. If it is an apartment, the normal fee is plus €2,000. Average fees are now around €2,500 for anything in a gated apartment-style complex.

Refuse charges for the local authorities are normally incorporated in the charges for these gated complexes and apartments. In the context of these management companies, as far as I can find out, these charges amount to probably €300 to €500 on average per annum and may be higher in some areas where refuse charges are higher.

Essentially, the people paying these charges through the management company are entitled to a small tax break for paying their refuse charges. However, because management companies are entirely unregulated by this Government and are normally effectively controlled by the developer and the agent chosen by him or her, the residents in the complexes cannot get a detailed and itemised bill to present to the Revenue Commissioners to prove that they are paying refuse charges. This is not the fault of the Revenue Commissioners who must deal with a situation which has developed without any thought on the part of the Government but which was basically designed to provide another quick killing for developers, particularly when they were selling apartments and houses at the height of the boom.

Can the Minister acknowledge that a serious wrong is being done to the tens of thousands of people who have had no option but to buy an affordable or very expensive property in a development subject to a management company? They have no recourse. The Revenue Commissioners do not have the ability to take this up because to whom does it go? There is no legislation to deal with it. It is an area where, once again, the ordinary citizen is powerless but the developer and construction company who built the complex are probably loaded up to the gills with tax breaks. That is perfectly legal. They have an army of lawyers and accountants looking after it. This is their business and it is perfectly legal. The Minister and the Government cannot seem to take account of the issues of the ordinary person who is entitled to a relatively modest tax break and cannot be facilitated to do so.

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