Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is an important issue. I hope the structure that will be in place for payment by the city council to the county council will deal with many of these issues. It is also important that one of the areas that was not transferred into the city is Little Island, which has quite a good commercial rate income. In addition, regarding many of the larger ratepayers, when I did a survey of Cork County Council, I found that ten ratepayers were paying €25 million between them to the city council. Quite a number of those will not transfer to the city but will remain in the county. Many of the big pharmaceutical companies in the county are big ratepayers. The structure set up under this Bill will deal with this issue. If there are concerns, we need to deal with them very quickly, not 12 months or two years after the issues have arisen. The legislation provides for this but the matter needs to be very carefully monitored by both local authorities and the Department.