Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is indicating that the baselines will not be considered. The problem is that he is discussing historical information. The baselines were based on a needs and resources model that was developed in 2001 and that has been tweaked since then. Places exist now that did not exist then. How can the needs of such places have been taken into account? I appreciate the point on the amount that is retained and I have done quite an amount of work in seeking to understand the issue and the process behind the amount that goes into the equalisation fund. As regards the self-funding element, in 2016, for example, there was €108 million involved in self-funding, €85 million of which came from Dublin. That amount will increase because the Minister has not changed the baseline rates and is not counting new needs due to population changes. Why do we have a census of the population? Why do we advertise that a census is to be carried out because we want to decide where services are needed and yet the Minister does not factor that into the methodology of deciding where resources are allocated? There is no doubt that there are new needs in places with increased populations. There must be a way of building that into the system or there is a fundamental unfairness therein. If people feel a tax is unfair, they are more likely to destabilise it. There is an inherent unfairness in the LPT. Will the Minister address it?

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