Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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112. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the details of the administration cost of the revaluations process to date; and the estimated final cost when the first round of rolling revaluations is completed. [17536/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Valuation Office is currently undertaking a systematic national programme of revaluing, for rates purposes, all industrial and commercial properties in the State on a rating authority basis. This is one of the main statutory functions of the Commissioner of Valuation who is completely independent in the operation of his statutory functions. The revaluation programme is the first of its kind since the mid-nineteenth century and has been a policy objective of successive governments for several decades. The programme has gained momentum following the enactment of the Valuation (Amendment) Act which was initiated by the then Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and passed into law by both Houses of the Oireachtas in 2015. The purpose of revaluation is to bring more equity, fairness and transparency into the local authority rating system and to distribute the commercial rates liability more equitably between ratepayers. Following this revaluation, subsequent revaluations of each rating authority area will then be carried out on a cyclical basis no sooner than five years and no later than ten years after the first revaluation, in accordance with Section 25 of the Valuation Act 2001.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Commissioner of Valuation is independent in the exercise of his functions. I am informed by the Commissioner that the costs incurred in the period 2005 to 2014 in respect of the revaluation programme was €33 million. The costs incurred for 2015 and 2016 (taking into account the 2015 Act) are of the order of €8 million in total. I am advised that these costs are apportioned on a pro-rata basis for the ongoing statutory and non-statutory work carried out by the Office and that these estimates are derived from the overall expenditure incurred in running the Valuation Office, taking account of staffing and other relevant costs. As the Deputy will be aware, the staffing costs of an organisation such as the Valuation Office would typically account for 75 - 80% of the total cost of running the organisation.

The 2015 Act has enabled the Valuation Office to adopt a series of new approaches to revaluation not supported by the previous legislation, including the outsourcing of work, the use of "self assessment" principles known as 'Occupier Assisted Valuation' and more extensive use of statistical analysis. These are being piloted during the REVAL 2017 phase of the overall programme. Accordingly, the costs for the period from 2017 to the anticipated completion of the first revaluation programme in 2021 are likely to be significantly determined by the success or otherwise of these pilot projects and the Valuation Office is not in a position to provide an estimate of such costs until the outcome of these pilot projects is apparent.