Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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151. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide in tabular form the net effect of the commercial rates revaluation on each local authority; if compensation will be given to local authorities who lose income as a result of the revaluation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43920/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Local authorities are under a statutory obligation to levy rates on any property used for commercial purposes in accordance with the details entered in the valuation lists prepared by the independent Commissioner of Valuation under the Valuation Act 2001. The levying and collection of rates are matters for each individual local authority. The annual rate on valuation (ARV), which is applied to the valuation of each property, determined by the Valuation Office, to obtain the amount payable in rates, is decided by the elected members of each local authority in the annual budget and its determination is a reserved function. The Commissioner of Valuation, who has sole responsibility for all valuation matters, is conducting a programme of revaluation of all commercial and industrial properties throughout the State on a county by county basis. In a revaluation the entire commercial valuation list for a local authority is brought up-to-date by reference to values at a specific valuation date and the entire list is published on one date (usually 31 December) and comes into effect for rating purposes on 1 January the following year.

The essential purpose of a revaluation is to redistribute the burden of rates more equitably in line with relative changes in valuations across different classes of properties or individual properties within particular classes or uses. Revaluation results in more consistent and up-to-date valuations for rating purposes and provides a more equitable distribution of valuations across those liable to pay rates.

Under Section 8 of the Local Government (Business Improvement Districts) Act 2006 the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, having obtained the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, can make an order directing a rating authority to limit the overall amount of income it could raise through rates in the year following a revaluation to the total amount of rates liable to be paid to it in the previous year, plus buoyancy (arising from valuations determined in the year of a revaluation of newly constructed property), adjusted for inflation as measured by the CPI.

Rate limitation orders have been made in each of the local authorities to have undergone a revaluation to date, namely, South Dublin, Fingal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councils.