John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I thank Senator Coffey for his amendments and appreciate the sincerity of his motives. I acknowledge a number of the points made by Senator Glynn on the collection of moneys. He suggested town councils should be allowed to collect the moneys. The local authorities have assured us they have the capacity to collect the moneys and that they will distribute those moneys to the town councils appropriately. I am aware of the concerns expressed by Senator Coffey. The issue concerns the body or organisation within the public service that is best suited to administer the €200 charge. I assume Fine Gael's opposition to sections 9 to 11, inclusive, and section 15 follows on from the thrust of the amendments generally, which is to substitute the Revenue Commissioners for local authorities in administering the collection of the charge.

I fully accept that we must administer our public services as well as we can. I also accept the Revenue Commission is a very efficient organisation that has made major strides in recent years in facilitating compliant taxpayers to discharge their liabilities with the minimum of fuss and red tape. I have no doubt that had this function been assigned to the Revenue Commissioners, the organisation would have put in place effective management and arrangements to implement the charge. Equally, I am in no doubt that local authorities will do a very efficient job in carrying the legislation into effect.

The local authorities set up a project board after the 2009 budget to plan for the introduction of the charge. The Local Government Computer Services Board was asked to design a website, similar in concept to the motor tax on-line website, to accept Internet payments. This site will be up and running in time for the liability date of 31 July 2009. Other arrangements continue to be put in place in local authorities to facilitate the smooth and effective implementation of the new charge. I again encourage all concerned to use the website to discharge liabilities to pay the charge. This is in everybody's interest, especially those obliged to pay it. The website is efficient and user friendly and will make life easier and simpler for those who avail of it. For those who cannot or will not use this facility, local authorities will accept payments at their local offices.

There is also an inherent logic in paying the charge to local authorities given that these bodies will retain and deploy the revenue stream arising from it. This is a crucial point. Senators Coffey and Doherty said they would like to see the local authorities have more discretion on the matter because they are ideally suited to collecting the fee. In my meetings with the managers, they stressed that they wanted to do this job. As far as I am concerned, if they want to do it, they should be allowed do so. This is a major step forward for local authorities towards securing a genuinely local source of revenue that will reduce their dependence on central government funding, which is the thrust of the Green Paper and forthcoming White Paper.

I await with interest the report of the Commission on Taxation. Part of its terms of reference require the commission to consider options for the future funding of local government. I have every confidence the commission will do its work thoroughly. It will be very interesting to see what conclusions and recommendations it reaches. For now, the approach taken in the Bill that the proceeds of the charge will be collected and retained by local authorities makes sense for the reasons I have outlined. I am not, therefore, disposed to accept the amendments under discussion.