John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

To deal with the Senator's point, it would be wrong of me, as Minister, to give him a commitment that the local authorities will be allowed to employ more people - I cannot do that. In these very difficult economic circumstances local authorities are redeploying their staff in different ways to try to achieve efficiencies. Given that there is an incentive for them to raise this money, they will do everything they can to do that. I insisted that the money would be retained by local authorities and would not go into central Exchequer funding because that would immediately incentivise the local authorities to do this. We need to incentivise the local authorities and we need to regenerate local government in this country and not just have local administration. I see this as the initial step in that regard.

On the administration, section 13 states: "The expenses incurred by the Minister in the administration of this Act shall, to such extent as may be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance, be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas." However, on the Senator's specific point, the Local Government Computer Services Board is the body which will administer this on behalf of local authorities and it will pay for this itself.

The Senator raises an interesting point, however. If we give discretion to local authorities to vary the rates as they see fit, there will of course be different rates for local authorities. This is fine and in other jurisdictions where there is real local government, one will find that rates vary from state to state. However, it raises difficulties in the administration, which is an issue for the local authorities to consider. As Senator Coffey noted, local councillors have been voted in and it is up to these elected representatives, not the management, to make these decisions. They have to take into account all the pros and cons, and consider what it costs to administer the system. There is no point in burdening themselves with red tape. They should try to make this as simple as possible to collect, which is the whole point of the legislation, so they can collect as much money as possible.