Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are constantly looking at the funding situation of all local authorities. We are very conscious of the great differences between them. In accordance with Government decisions on local retention of the local property tax, certain local authorities with large property bases receive additional income from the local property tax compared with their baseline. The Government decided that these local authorities would use this surplus funding in two ways: a proportion of it would be available for their own use and the remainder to fund some services in the housing and roads areas. This process is known as self-funding, replacing central executive funding as well. Approximately €108 million from the local property tax is supporting housing and road services in 2018. We do allow for this in the counties that are growing quicker than others in terms of their property base.

On the Deputy's statement earlier that people are beginning to realise that the local property tax is being used to plug a gap, people were always aware of what it was to be used for. I repeatedly said that it was a great shame that the local property tax was introduced at a time when resources nationally had to be cut across the board. There is great benefit in having a local property tax, although people do not see that at this point because of the timing of its introduction. As things improve, they will be able to link improvements to it. In the early years, it was used to plug the gap in national funding. There is no denying of this and it is a great shame. One of my first suggestions on being elected to this House was that we should bring in a local property tax. At that stage, Bertie Ahern and others were focused on tax reductions without putting in place a local property tax. They should have done a combination of both. We would be in a much better place had we done that. We are now trying to correct the situation and local property tax plays a major part in that regard.

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