Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House today. One of the greatest challenges for us is how we attract people into public life. When it comes to councillors there are two real components, one of which is their pay and conditions. We have all made our contributions on that. I believe at this stage it has gone above all our pay grades in this House and sits at another level. Hopefully, we will have an answer to that shortly.

The second component involves trying to give councillors power that has a direct and immediate impact on their communities and the people they serve. When the Putting People First action programme was launched, I believed I saw change from a point of view of progression in restoring democracy at local level, specifically around the local property tax, LPT, process. We can now argue that because of the baselines and the equalisation fund, the LPT actually takes that flexibility away from councillors. Realistically, they are left with a small part of the budgetary process to allocate from a discretionary point of view.

I was a Member of the House and part of the process that brought through the Local Government Rates and Other Matters Act 2019. We finished that process and it had unanimous support across all parties in the House. It dealt with the antiquated commercial rates process. It is still antiquated, but the 2019 Act tried to tidy it up. The part that received unanimous support and we all looked forward to was giving councillors the power to introduce a rates waiver scheme. The question today is about why that has not been enacted.

A year and a half has gone by since this Bill was passed. We all know our county development plan process. Most of our counties are reviewing or amending their county development plan process at this stage. The conditions in the Act were that if a council was going to introduce a rates waiver scheme, it had to be part of the county plan, local area plan or national planning framework. The other condition related to the local economic and community plan, which is a rolling document and can be changed at any time. Now is the appropriate time to enact this legislation because every councillor is now going through that process.

Covid-19 has resulted in a further decline of our towns and villages. We are trying to restore life to our main streets. The measure I have mentioned gives councils the opportunity and gives them back the power to which I believe they are entitled. It can make a difference to the people and the communities they represent. I know each scheme must be finally approved by the Minister, but that initial process needs to start now. We need to enact this good legislation, which restores powers to the councils and gives them the opportunity to incentivise business in their towns and villages.

I wrote to the Minister of State on this directly. I believe he also received a letter from a film studio in County Wicklow which put its case forward. It would have been receiving a benefit with regard to the levy scheme. It is, therefore, about restoring powers. When does the Minister of State see section 15 of the Act being enacted by the Minister to give the councillors the power to introduce a commercial rates waiver scheme?