Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to raise three matters. On 4 July, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government produced a statutory instrument, No. 296, in respect of the local property tax. Does the Taoiseach accept that the restrictions imposed by this set of regulations are so excessive that they will make it virtually impossible for local authorities to give effect in the current year to the legislative provision whereby they may increase or decrease the property tax by 15%?

We learned this morning that Irish Water intends to collect people's personal public service numbers to allow it to introduce the free allowance and to enable children to have free water. Will this initiative require any legislative underpinning? I raise it particularly in the context of the possibility that Irish Water, as a semi-State body, might be privatised at some future stage, which would give rise to a situation in which private companies would have possession of people's personal public service numbers.

I do not want to raise the Garth Brooks issue again as it was well ventilated at a committee meeting this morning. In light of the concerns expressed by the Taoiseach, the suggestion at this morning's meeting that the planning system is very autocratic and the fact that our planning legislation has not been the subject of any radical change since 2000, when the country was in the midst of a boom, does the Taoiseach believe planning legislation might need to be amended? Does he consider that the planning legislation we have is serving the public interest?

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