Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. On the valuation process, as this happened in my local authority area, I know there are, generally speaking, more winners than losers when this occurs in terms of people seeing their rateable valuation decrease rather than increase. It is roughly a 65-35 split, so some 65% will find themselves paying less as a result. In some local authority areas, as the Deputy knows, this work has not been done in a very long time and it is a question of ensuring that there is fairness across the system in order some people are not carrying a historic burden in meeting the rates needs of local authorities. This is very important work. If someone feels that a mistake has been made in the process, there is an appeals mechanism they can follow which is independent of me, as Minister, and my office.

I raised the rates Bill with the Attorney General last week and I raised it with him again today. It is priority legislation for us and as it will not be going to pre-legislative scrutiny, once we have it drafted and ready to go we can bring it straight into the Dáil. I had hoped it would be published later this month but more than likely, it will be the beginning of next month. It is a very important Bill that will give greater enforcement powers to local authorities and allow them to achieve what the Deputy wants them to achieve, which is to be able to bring in rates alleviation measures and to recognise where certain areas need a bit more help to come up, for whatever reason, by reducing the burden on local businesses. The risk with having rates which are based on turnover is that it is not a very consistent basis for a local authority to be able to plan into the future based on how much money might be coming to them in a given year. I would much rather focus on giving authorities more enforcement powers in order that they can collect more than they collect today. Some local authorities do this very well, while other local authorities do not do it very well.

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