Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Aindrias Moynihan.

This is a tidying-up Bill. I am not saying that a tidying-up Bill was not needed but this is not reform. There is a need for a full reform of the rates system.

With some reservations, I welcome a much better system of collection. We are looking to move from a system that was collecting something like 77% of the money to a system where all the money will be collected. Those who are in arrears are jumping from a situation whereby they owe arrears but were not paying the full money to a situation where they have to pay the full money plus arrears. For some businesses, if that is at too sharp a curve, it becomes impossible to sort out.

My view has always been that, if a person in business has financial problems and the State says it will lend that person more money, that does not solve the problem. The problem is that the person has not been able to service their debt to date and the Government is then asking them to service another debt. Similarly, in this case, if businesses are told that not only do they have to start paying 100% of what they owe every year but they also have to pay the arrears over, say, two or three years, they are suddenly expected to pay the rates and a lot more with it, depending on how big those accumulated arrears are. That can put an impossible burden on a business that might otherwise be viable. A potentially viable businesses might be able to pay the full rate from now on, because times are a bit better, but it may not be able to pay the accumulated arrears that might have been allowed to build up, maybe partly because they were low priority and were not the creditors who did the most shouting. We will have a problem there.

It was tough medicine when the Revenue got a lot stricter in the 1980s than it had been and there was a period of adjustment. There was a lot of criticism at the time, for example, when penalties and interests were waived, but it gave people the chance to catch up.

This is always a problem. The other thing is if 95% of the rate, which we will say is the LPT figure, was actually collected, there would be scope for local authorities to reduce rates for all those who had been paying up to date. I would not hold my breath. It is something we also have to look at.

One thing I noticed about rates is there are certain types of business that are always complaining about rates. It goes back to the valuation system. My understanding is that the size in square metres of a building is one of the big determining factors. It depends on what one is doing with the square metres. One could have a massive production of microchips in a very small space but if one is doing something extensive or occasional, it becomes a massive burden. This is where what I call extensive hospitality, which tends to be either accommodation or a pub that only does weekend trade for most of the year, which is very typical in rural areas, and has built a big function room that is used for the odd funeral or social-----

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