Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have yet to meet the Sir Humphrey to whom the Deputy continually refers. His Fianna Fáil colleagues must have taken him with them when they left office.

What I have been trying to do in this legislation is to fix a number of anomalies from the previous valuations Bill, including the fact that sports clubs were being penalised well beyond their commercial activity, and trying to provide clarity in simplifying the definitions of "charity" and "not for profit". I do not know if Deputy Fleming could, but I certainly could not clearly outline the difference between a charitable child care provider and a not-for-profit child care provider. As the Deputy says, there were differences throughout the country in how that was being interpreted by local authorities. I have tried to make that very clear on a legislative footing in this Bill, an amendment that was welcomed in the Seanad by all parties.

The Deputy calls on me to do the generous thing. The generous thing to do in relation to child care is for the interdepartmental group to move forward with proposals - it will report back to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs shortly - to continue the €170 million a year subvention to the ECCE scheme, and to use the valuations Bill for what it is intended: to attach a real value to people operating businesses. For every person and every element of business that I exempt in this Bill, someone else must be found in a particular town to pay more. The pie stays the same size for every county. If Deputy Fleming wants to tell the butcher in his town that he is going to pay more because the child care provider set up for profit is not paying rates, that is a political point he is entitled to make. I am trying to have consistency in this Bill and my consistency is based on the idea that if a business is established for the purpose of profit, it pays rates; if it is not for profit, it does not.

See this speech in context