Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Dáil amendment No. 188 is a technical amendment to provide for the reference to the "Act of 2001" in the chapter to be the Valuation Act 2001.

Sections 28(14) and 28(15) were amended to remove the terms "making a rate" and "rate made" and to replace those terms with "levying a rate" and "rate levied", which conform with the wording of section 4 of the Local Government Rates and Other Matters Act 2019.

Sections 28(14) and 28(15) of the Valuation Act 2001 provide that amendments to the valuation list have full force from the relevant date during the year and that potential consequential overpayments or underpayments of rates are dealt with by the rating authority. Section 38 of the Valuation Act 2001 relates to amendments of the valuation list to take account of decisions of the Valuation Tribunal, the High Court or the Supreme Court. The effect of this new subsection is to amend section 38 to allow for decisions from those bodies having full force from the appropriate dates and to allow the rating authority to deal with consequential overpayments or underpayments of rates. This would be consistent with the actions to be taken by the rating authority on foot of notification of the outcome of revisions of valuation during the year.

Section 53(11) is to be amended to reinstate the temporal link that was inadvertently removed in the Local Government Rates and Other Matters Act 2019 such that the Commissioner of Valuation issues the notice from section 53(12) of the Act of 2001 at the same time as the copy of the global valuation certificate.

One of the purposes of commencing the 2019 Act before the second half of this year is in order to comply with an existing legal requirement. Rate limitation orders are legally required to be made in October or November of this year as part of the revaluation programme being undertaken by Tailte Éireann.

The Valuation Acts 2001 to 2015 provide for a comprehensive revaluation of all commercial and industrial property in the State. The Valuation Office has been undertaking this process for some years and revaluations have now been completed in 23 of the 31 local authorities to date. Tailte Éireann has confirmed that revaluations for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the third revaluation for that local authority, and Clare, Donegal, Galway, Kerry and Mayo county councils and Galway City Council, the first revaluations for those six west-coast local authorities, are due to be completed this year and be effective from 2024. Rate limitation orders are required to be made for each of those seven local authorities in the second half of the year.

The amendment to section 56 is a transitional provision required to cater for the fact that the seven local authorities to which the rate limitation orders will apply will not have determined their annual rates of valuation, ARVs, for the preceding year, that is, this year, pursuant to section 3. Those local authorities determined their ARVs for this year pursuant to section 103(7) of the Local Government Act 2001. This situation will arise only this year and will not impact rate limitation orders being made in future years.