Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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336. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to a statement on 13 December 2013 that local authorities would receive a boost of €98 million in 2014 as receipts from local property tax and other direct allocations contributed to the funding model; in view of the fact that the local authorities are in the process of adopting budgets for 2015 and are making decisions on adjusting local property tax rates, if he will confirm that it is his plan to continue to support the local authorities by maintaining the current level of central Government support thereby enabling local authorities to retain the 80% local property tax to improve local services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39192/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The local government sector receives funding from a number of different sources, including central Government (from a number of different Departments) and the Local Government Fund. The issue of grant allocations from Central Government is a matter for finalisation in the context of the Estimates pro cess, as is normally the case. In relation to Local Property Tax (LPT), the Government has decided that 80% of LPT will be retained locally from 2015 to fund vital public services. The remaining 20% will be re-distributed to provide top-up funding to certain local authorities that have lower property tax bases due to the variance in property values across the State, in such a way as to ensure that no local authority is worse off in 2015 compared to General Purpose Grant allocations in 2014.

Every local authority has the power, from 1 July 2014, to vary the basic rate of LPT by up to 15%. In the event that a local authority decides to increase LPT rates, they will retain 100% of the additional LPT collected. Where a local authority decides to reduce LPT rates, the full cost of that reduction will be reflected in a reduced LPT allocation to that local authority. Local authorities are required to notify the Revenue Commissioners by 30 September each year where they have, by resolution, decided to vary LPT rates; for 2015, 14 local authorities availed of the opportunity to vary the rate of LPT, further details of which are available on the Revenue Commissioner’s website at .

The amount of LPT receipts to be retained locally in 2015 for 12 local authorities will be greater than the level of funding those individual local authorities received from General Purpose Grants in 2014. The local authorities concerned are Clare, Cork County, Cork City, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin City, Fingal, Galway City, Kerry, Kildare, Meath, South Dublin and Wicklow. The Government has decided that these 12 authorities will be entitled to use a certain portion of that additional funding for their own discretionary purposes as part of the normal budgetary process. That portion will be an amount equal to 20% of the total expected LPT receipts for their respective local authority areas (before any decision to vary rates) or alternatively the full amount of the additional funding where that is less than the value of 20% of LPT receipts. It will be a matter for the individual local authorities to decide how to spend that discretionary funding.

My Department has already advised local authorities of their provisional Local Property Taxallocations from the Local Government Fund for 2015.