Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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310. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the revenue received by each local authority from the development levy or variations of the levy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18141/19]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Development contributions are levied as conditions attached to planning permissions and are payable prior to commencement of development or as otherwise agreed by the local authority. Commencement notices are issued by the developer to the local authority and these generally trigger the raising of the charge. Local authorities may facilitate the phased payment of contributions, such as when units are completed or when a stage is reached in the development.

In order to avoid inconsistencies in recognising income and the raising of invoices that would be unlikely to be collected in the near future, a pragmatic approach to accounting for income has been adopted. When a commencement notice is received, contributions collectable within the next 12 months are usually treated as income and a short-term debtor is raised. Those contributions not deemed collectable in the next 12 months are treated as deferred income, with potential debtors not collectable in the next 12 months being treated as long-term debtors. Deferred income is treated as a long-term creditor and is matched against Long-term development contribution debtors in the Annual Financial Statement (AFS).  This accounting treatment acknowledges that long-term debtors are not income in the current period, and they may or may not become due depending on the progress of the development and are thus deferred to future periods.

Local Authorities operate on an accrual accounting basis and recognise income and expenditure as incurred, regardless of the cash transactions. The AFS do not separately show the amount of cash on hand in relation to development contributions but instead show the amount of development contributions due to local authorities.

Appendix 5 of the amalgamated AFS shows a total income of €211.5m for Development Contributions for the financial year ending 31/12/2017, which is the most recent year for which audited figures are available. The development contribution income for each local authority for 2017 is set out in the following table.  Note 5 of the AFS shows short term current debtors of €293.2 m, gross of any bad debt provisions.

The reporting of long term development contribution debtors and deferred income in respect of development contributions was amended with effect from AFS 2016, meaning they are no longer shown separately (although the information continues to be recorded within the Local Authorities Financial Management Systems). The AFS does not separately report long-term debtors and deferred income but effectively nets these off. The rationale for this change was to address the misinterpretation of the data. Long-term development contribution debtors and deferred income were not being viewed together, leading to a misleading perception that significant long-term development contributions were due to local authorities.