Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank his officials for holding meetings on this legislation, which I found very helpful. I learned more from them than I have done in many other places. I acknowledge their presence and thank them for giving us their time.

I acknowledge also the work of Ms Niamh Larkin who was responsible for a value for money audit on the Local Government Audit Service, specifically on commercial rates and local authorities. I recommend every Member, Minister and local government to read the document. There is a section on local councils. What is it about councillors? We elect councillors to hold the executive to account. Despite what chief executives or county managers might say, there is legislation that permits elected members to ask their chief executives about the write-off of rates every year and for them to produce a schedule and a list. Indeed, the legislation also provides for them to publish the schedule of defaulters in respect of rates. Why are we not doing so? We are talking about more powers for city and county councillors but they have powers. I recommend, as mandatory reading for every person involved in local government, the report by Ms Niamh Larkin, director of audit in the Local Government Audit Service, published in December 2018.

In particular, I reference the section which mentions section 26 of the Local Government (Financial Procedures and Audit) Regulations 2014, SI 226 of 2014 which provides for the production of a schedule of uncollected rates, reporting thereon to the elected members of the council and the option to publish list of defaulters rather than authority writing them off. Ms Larkin, the director of audit in the Local Government Audit Service, states there was no evidence of the local authorities publishing the list of uncollected rates and the ratepayers concerned in recent years.

Local councillors have powers to hold their executives to account on many issues but this is a particular one. Every chief executive must produce an executive order for write-offs. When we talk about payments, we need to look at the write-offs. Nobody, but nobody, should have a write-off that is not due to him or her. Good due diligence and auditing processes must be monitored to ensure nobody falls through the net. I am not suggesting anyone is writing them off but there need to be a good reasons, and councillors need to question them.

I am conscious this Bill is time sensitive and I will not go into all of that, as the Minister of State said it all here. The primary objective of the Bill is to have one single consolidated rates legislation. Rates are currently payable in two halves or moieties, as we call them, in the calendar year. This legislation will replace the flexible payments, and that is to be encouraged. I welcome the proposal to establish a new database that will be operated by the Local Government Management Agency. That is positive.

I acknowledge this Bill provides more powers to city and county councillors, which is a good. Under this Bill local authorities will be able to introduce rates alleviation measures to support specific issues and not just any issue, or making it up as one goes along. They will have to demonstrate that these alleviation measures are based on things like the objectives of Project Ireland 2040, local business and incentive schemes, as the Minister of State rightly pointed out, and support entrepreneurship and start-ups. All that is very positive. Local government has a mandate through its local enterprise office, LEO, operations to support enterprise, which is important. Elected members wanted that mandate and they now have it, so let them exercise that.

The Bill seeks to encourage and stimulate economic activity through commercial rates exemptions. I understand that applicable objectives will be detailed in new regulations, which the Minister of State mentioned. Perhaps he would engage on that and bring that matter back to the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government to tease it out because it is the statutory committee within the Houses that deals with that.

Elected members can vary the basic local property tax rates on residential properties by plus or minus 15% but through a proper consultation process. I have suggested that if there is to be any deviation or change to rates, there must be public consultation. We have got to be very clear. We cannot advantage someone and disadvantage someone else in business. That is important and I am interested to hear more on that.

The revaluation process conducted by the Valuation Office is too slow and too expensive, and lacks transparency. I am aware of an industry in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council area where it was suggested the council would have lost about €2 million because there were no valuation certificates and yet the same council, which was also the planning authority, had every detailed square metre of that development because it had gone through a planning process so that is strange. This idea of having a temporary situation in place is right as we cannot lose revenue.

When we talk about rates, we must be honest about local government funding. We need an upfront honest debate on how we will fund local government. We can have all the local government reform we like but if we cannot put a sustainable funding mechanism in place, we are in real difficulty. I have looked at the rates bases of some of the local authorities and there is a very high reliance on retail. Should there be a downturn in retail, some of these local authorities would be in trouble.

The Bill provides a mechanism for local authorities to issue preliminary valuation levies and commercial values, which I welcome. Each local authority will retain control. I read the transcripts of the debate in the Dáil and Fianna Fáil suggested that the Revenue Commissioners might be brought in to deal with this. I did not know whether that was a joke but I noted the Minister of State's response. I think it is best that we leave local councils to deliver because they know best the people in their communities and towns. We need an imaginative approach where we can come to reasonable arrangements when businesses are in distress and support them in paying their rates.

It is time we had an ongoing debate on local government funding, but at a later date. IBEC and a number of business people made a number of recommendations, which I will quickly summarise. They suggested that we monitor the operations and powers exercised by local authorities as a result of this legislation, which is reasonable and fair. They suggested including published transparent statistics on the efficiency of collections. We have got to improve the collections but I believe elected members could do much of that by keeping pressure on their chief executives. They suggested that they implement a centralised shared model for commercial rates collection. That is something we should not write-off. If this does not work and we do not see an improvement in the collection of rates, we should revisit that at some point. They suggested that they publish draft regulations on the rates alleviation scheme, setting out the parameters. I think the Minister of State covered that.

In essence, this is a good Bill and I will support it because it is the right thing to do. It is not perfect and needs some more tweaking. Let us get on with this and improve the rates system, which this Bill attempts to do. However, there will be a time when we will have to go back and address the issue.

Will the Minister of State clarify the potential for, or the suggestion that, rates may be introduced for the bed and breakfast sector. I am totally against rates for the bed and breakfast sector, particularly that part of the sector associated with agritourism. It is critical that the Government is consistent about supporting rural villages, towns and communities and that we do not introduce a situation where we have commercial rates on family-run bed and breakfasts.