Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

It is welcome that local authorities are pursuing these development levies from the developers and that extra staff have been assigned to this. What if the local authorities are not able to collect the money? Is the Government examining this problem? At the Green Party conference at the weekend the Minister referred to how we will fund local authorities in the future. Local authorities were making money in the same unsustainable way as banks and the Government. All of this development was unsustainable and now it has collapsed. Local authorities are one of the institutions that will pay the price for this type of one-dimensional view of how to get the bulk of funding. Does the Minister have a view of how we will deal with this? Are there plans or emergency plans if they do not collect funds?

I referred to the developer, Laragan Developments Limited, that went in to examinership. The secured creditor was Anglo Irish Bank and the unsecured creditor was the local authority. When developers go into examinership will it be the case that local authorities lose out to the banks because the banks or NAMA have secured debts and the local authorities do not? We could have a crisis in local government besides unfinished estates.

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