Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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75. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the indicative timeframe for when county revaluations for commercial rate purposes will be carried out for each county; when they will be completed by the Valuations Office; and her plans or proposals to expedite all county valuations in a shorter timeframe. [19516/16]

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 Acts 2001 to 2015 to maintain a valuation list of all commercial properties in the State which are used by Local Authorities in the calculation of rates due from individual ratepayers. Maintenance of a valuation list 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. Part 5 of the Valuation Act 2001, as amended by the Valuation (Amendment) Act 2015 provides for the revaluation of all commercial properties other than those occupied by public utility undertakings which are dealt with separately by way of a global valuation process prescribed in section 53 of the Acts. 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 there to reflect structural changes or the addition 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 every Local Authority onto the 5-10 year cycle of revaluations, provided for in the legislation, will represent a sea-change for the rateable valuation system. The present position is that all local authorities in Dublin, Waterford and Limerick are now revalued. These 48,000 properties represent approx. 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 Authority areas which are the County Council areas of Kildare; Leitrim; Longford; Offaly; Roscommon; Sligo and Westmeath. The work of revaluation is currently under way simultaneously in all seven counties and first results are expected during the first quarter of 2017. At this stage it would be premature for the Commissioner to say which counties will be included in the following tranche of counties to undergo a revaluation as there are a number of factors which will impact on that decision. For instance, a vital determinant will be the outcome of the necessary consultations with the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government and with local authorities which is a pre-requisite prior to commencing a revaluation and which is provided for in section 19(1) of the Valuation Act 2001. While the revaluation programme has been underway, the Valuation Office has continued to maintain the valuation lists by carrying out revision work and since 2011 a total of 20,927 revision applications were dealt with while simultaneously carrying out the revaluations of Dublin City, Waterford and Limerick.

However, the revaluation programme needs to be accelerated and this is the main objective of the Valuation (Amendment) Act 2015 which came into effect on 8 June 2015. The measures in the Act which will enable the Commissioner to accelerate the national programme of revaluation include provisions for Outsourcing, Occupier Assisted Valuation, streamlining the appeal process and wider use of computer-aided techniques. Occupier Assisted Valuation is the term being used for a form of self-assessment that will be introduced and will 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, has therefore been 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 use outsourcing in two other Local Authority areas. 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. As mentioned, the occupier-assisted valuation system will be tested in County Laois and its results together with the results of the outsourcing project will be critically appraised before a decision is taken by the Commissioner as to whether it is prudent to use these measures in revaluation projects commencing in other rating authority areas.