Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I have been listening to this debate with some interest. There have been various contributions and Deputy Gibney's would be the most similar to mine in this context. In essence, while this proposal has some merit if it were taken in an isolated way, it is basically tinkering around the edges because we do not have a European-style property tax in Ireland.

The way to work this out is simply by looking at the budget for South Dublin County Council, my own council. Its budget for 2025 is an estimated €392 million. It generates an income of €227 million from a range of services and sources, including rents, fees, charges, loan repayments, grants and recoupment, much of which comes directly from the Government. Of the remaining amount, €133.5 million comes from commercial rates and €31.5 million from the local property tax, which is a drop in the ocean.

When I came back on to the council after being a TD in 2014, for the first five years of my term I consistently voted not to reduce the local property tax by the 15% allowable at the time. We had the somewhat surreal situation of a Fine Gael councillor on the one hand and a Sinn Féin councillor on the other hand both working together to save a few quid for the hard-pressed residents, but missing the fundamental point which was that the Government took with one hand and gave with the other. It would have meant only a small smidgen of extra money by choosing not to reduce it by 15%. The Government is obviously putting a challenge to local elected representatives in situations like that.

Elected representatives have seen the powers of local government diminished over the years in many cases and rightly so. We were prevented from material contraventions, for example, because they were abused. There were very cosy relationships with developers and as such it could have been argued back in the day, before councillors were paid a reasonable sum, that the chances of corruption were quite high. Besides the legitimate donations, which I would personally disagree with, I do not believe that any of our elected representatives around the country are taking money now. However, the fact remains that they do not have the power. We need European-style local government with the power to raise real money.

Social Justice Ireland has suggested it should be a site-valuation tax rather than local property tax but we should really be reducing income taxes proportionately and allowing a proper workable local property tax where people can say, "That paid for services." We have to make a decision. As we do not have that with this legislation, we need something bigger.

See this speech in context