Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome, as are his officials who have done a massive amount of work on this legislation. I will raise a couple of points. People have been talking about the funding of local government. Local government has been struggling with regard to funding since the abolition of domestic rates without proper provision being made for other funding. If that balance had been maintained, local authorities would receive several hundreds of millions more in funding than they currently do. The abolition of domestic rates without a proper plan to replace lost funding has greatly undermined local government. It was done as an electoral gimmick and local government has suffered as a result ever since.

I will go through some specifics of the Bill. I did not have an opportunity to table an amendment on this issue, but I would be grateful if the Minister of State would consider it. It is about archives. I am concerned that no amendment to section 11 of Schedule 4 of the Valuation Act 2001 is proposed as part of this Bill. The relevant section as currently worded refers to, "Any art gallery, museum, library, park or national monument which is normally open to the general public and which is not established or maintained for the purpose of making a private profit." This definition excludes archive services which are open to the public and not for profit.Many archives are exempt under the current legislation as they form part of a religious body exemption under section 7 of Schedule 4, an educational institution, for example, a university, with exemption under section 10 of Schedule 4 or a national cultural institute with exemption under section 12 of Schedule 4. However, this is not the case with archives of the local authorities. The local authorities are required to collect and make available the archives of records of local government, as enshrined in section 80 of the Local Government Act 2001. At present, local government archives are required to pay rates on their premises, which puts a burden on them. I will not ask the Minister of State to respond on this today and I am sorry I did not have an opportunity to mention it before he came to the House, but perhaps he would examine this before tomorrow and possibly consider an amendment to cover it. I welcome the fact that he is meeting the local authority groups on 16 July. We also have an amendment tabled in this regard and hopefully it can resolve the issue, which I would welcome.

As Senator Coffey said, we must be very careful about the urban-rural divide. I believe strongly in social solidarity and that the strong should help the weak. That is correct. It is easy to say that Dublin is doing very well but Senator Reilly is quite correct. My local village is a village of charity shops. They have been suffering badly. The recovery has been positive in many ways and unemployment levels have dropped, but people are struggling as well. While businesses in the local village in Ringsend have closed and the residents have fewer services their property charges will be increased, depending on what is accepted. They are quite hefty for an inner city community and a two up, two down property. One could have a mansion in rural Ireland with the property tax that is being paid in urban Ireland.

There are many arguments with regard to improved services and so forth and I accept some of those, but if we expect people to pay property tax to provide money that will be spent in the local area we must compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. The maintenance of national primary routes was taken out of the central authority and put under the local authority without any compensation. In Kildare the national primary routes are supported by central taxation but they are supported by local property tax in urban areas. That is not counted. The grant levels to residents in cities, euro for euro per head of population, are less than those in rural Ireland. That must be accepted. One can go through the level of property tax and taxation raised per head of population and see that the return to people in urban areas is very low. I accept that there are costs and that one can get better value for money due to population density, but it is a little unfair of Senator Coffey to make a sweeping remark about Dublin considering what all of us have gone through.