Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Bill, as initiated, made provision to enable the commissioners to have certain valuation functions or portions of functions performed by external service providers. The overall purpose of the provision is to enable the commissioner to augment the internal capacity of the Valuation Office by engaging external resources. It is an enabling provision, and initially the commissioner is expected to pilot such outsourcing in selected rating authority areas. This amendment now gives the commissioner the flexibility, where it is deemed necessary, to restrict the functions that may be performed by external service providers to, for example, particular classes of relevant property, such as retail, office or industrial units, or that outsourcing could be restricted by geographical area within a rating authority area.

This amendment also means that section 4, as published, will be deleted. The amendment originally envisaged for section 4 was made in the Local Government Reform Act 2014. This needed to be done early in 2014 to ensure there would be no possibility that the valuation list would be deemed incomplete. Heretofore, State-occupied property that was not rateable was valued. This was an inefficient use of Valuation Office resources. These properties were not valued as part of the Dublin city or Waterford revaluations, and this Bill will mean that if the property is not rateable, it does not have to be valued. The amendment needed to be made in early 2014 to align what has to be done in practice with legislation.

This amendment is basically about speeding up the process of revaluation so that people can benefit from a fair and accurate valuation in a timely fashion, while recognising that we do not wish to waste the resources of a State office by having it value buildings that are not rateable.