Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Management Fees (Local Property Tax Relief) Bill 2018, and I thank my colleague, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, for bringing it forward. These fees were brought in to fund things such as the maintenance of public lighting, roads, paths and grounds in an area. We should stand back and look at some of the estates that have been built in the last number of years, and consider those which will be built in the future. In Portlaoise there are a number of estates with 600 or 700 housing units and populations of 2,000 people in them. Those estates are effectively large towns in rural Ireland in their own right. The entire cost of maintaining such an estate will fall to the management company in terms of the area that is owned by the residents in that estate. We are not talking about small estates with ten or 20 house, but significant urban areas. It has to be looked at in that way.

The amount of relief being considered in this legislation is very modest. It is a token recognition for the work that is carried out by these management companies and will work out at less than €90 for each of those locations. It will only apply to people who are owner-occupiers rather than those who rent houses, and is designed to prevent, in some way, people from having to pay tax on the double.

People will be concerned about this. The collection rate of the local property tax is approximately 97%. In Laois it is 98%, which is one of the highest rates in the country. This is being done by the Revenue Commissioners, and so it does not impact on the workload of the local authorities. If Revenue has a system whereby credit can be issued against the local property tax it could be implemented seamlessly, without any interference. Revenue is very sophisticated and would be able to do that. It would also have a great side effect. Everyone living in estates would want to pay their management fees in order to get this credit from the Revenue Commissioners. That would help to ensure that the management companies, which in effect are managing small towns, would have sufficient funds to enable them to continue to do that. That would be a very important side effect.

People will also be concerned that this will have a bigger impact in major cities such as Dublin and surrounding areas where a lot of local property tax is collected. That tax goes towards a fund that is distributed to other areas where a smaller amount of local property tax is collected. This legislation would have a minimal effect on some of the smaller counties that do not have large collections from the local property tax and where there are not as many big management companies in big estates. It would be very fair and balanced. I ask people to be very fair and very balanced when considering this. We can tease out the details on Committee Stage. I believe there is the germ of a good idea that should pass into legislation.

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