Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The bulk of the yield will be spent by the local authorities in whose functional area the tax is gathered. As well as that, from 2015, discretion will be vested in the elected members of local authorities to vary the tax up or down. I envisage a situation that in areas where there is a high property tax it will be an election issue when candidates go knocking on doors to reduce the tax and in other areas if the tax is low there will be pressure to increase it in order to provide extra services. We are talking about repairing a flaw in the tax system which goes back to the abolition of rates in 1977. We must start to move towards a system of local government where local government raises the tax, spends the tax and is accountable to the people who elect it locally.

The move on that is to vest the power in the local authorities to vary the tax by plus or minus 15%. We will see how that goes and what subsequent Governments will do but we are building a base so that we have real local government which is funded and can provide services. Deputies might not agree with that but the arguments I am making are intellectually sound and valid. We are not pretending to be doing anything other than what we are doing.

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