Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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29. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality to introduce self-assessment for commercial rates, given the systemic inability of the Valuations Office to carry out valuations in a timely manner; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13060/16]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Commissioner of Valuation, who is independent in the exercise of his functions, has responsibility under the Valuation Act 2001 to maintain valuation lists of all commercial properties in the State which are used by Local Authorities in the calculation of rates due from individual ratepayers. This is done using two processes known as revaluationand revision.

Revaluation is a process where all properties in a Local Authority area are valued periodically by reference to a single valuation date. After the first revaluation of a Local Authority area is completed, revaluation is then scheduled to take place every five to ten years to reflect changes in economic circumstances since the last revaluation took place. Revision, on the other hand, is intended to reflect structural changes to individual properties or the addition to the Valuation Lists of new properties between revaluations. The national revaluation programme is the first general valuation of all commercial property in the state since the middle of the 19th century. It is a very significant undertaking and involves the valuation of some 146,000 properties. Completing the first revaluation and getting properties in every Local Authority area onto the 5-10 year cycle of revaluations, provided for in the legislation, will represent a sea-change for the valuation system.

The present position is that all rateable properties in the Dublin, Waterford and Limerick local authority areas are now revalued. These 48,000 properties represent approximately 57% of the national rateable valuation base in monetary value terms or 33% in numerical terms. In addition,13 public utilities representing some of the largest ratepayers in the State have been valued on a global basis. Significant progress is being made and the programme has established a momentum which will be shortly built upon as the Commissioner has made valuation orders for the revaluation of seven more Local Authorities. While the revaluation programme has been underway, the Valuation Office has continued to carry out revision work and since 2011 a total of 30,206 revision valuations were completed and certified while simultaneously carrying out the revaluations of Dublin City, Waterford and Limerick.

However, in order to complete the revaluation on a nationwide basis in the most timely manner, the programme will need to be accelerated and this is the main objective of the relevant provisions of the Valuation (Amendment) Act 2015 which came into effect on 8 June 2015. The measures in the Act will enable the Commissioner of Valuation to accelerate the national programme of revaluation including provisions for Outsourcing, Occupier Assisted Valuation, streamlining the appeal process and wider use of computer-aided and statistical techniques. Occupier Assisted Valuation is the term being used for the form of self-assessment that will be introduced as it better reflects what will happen in practice. Valuation of commercial property is often a very complex process resulting in annual rates bills that can be very significant for the individual ratepayer. This requires the application of a uniform approach based on assessing the potential annual rental value of each property and is a more complex exercise than the self-assessment of, say, Local Property Tax.

Occupier Assisted Valuation has the potential however to be a valuable new addition which will help to accelerate the revaluation programme and will bring the ratepayer into closer contact with a system that is one of the key determinants of his or her rates liability. Self-assessment, in an appropriate form, is therefore being introduced by the new legislation. Now that the legislation is in place, the Commissioner has commenced arrangements to pilot Occupier Assisted Valuation in one Local Authority area – County Laois - initially and is also using the enabling provisions in the new legislation to avail of external valuation resources to conduct the revaluation of counties Carlow and Kilkenny. Utilising these new measures to supplement the proven capacity of the Valuation Office to deliver revaluations will see significant progress towards a more rapid completion of the national programme of revaluation. The results of the piloting of the Occupier Assisted Valuation system in County Laois will be critically appraised before a decision is taken by the Commissioner as to whether it is appropriate to use in revaluation projects commencing in other rating authority areas.