Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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284. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his plans to create an equalisation fund to increase the Local Government Fund for local authorities such as Galway County Council, whose fund is one of the lowest per head of population despite the fact that the county has the second largest area in the country and has a diverse range of issues, including islands; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43232/20]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for Government 'Our Shared Future', commits to bringing about reforms in the workings of Local Property Tax (LPT). These reforms will involve bringing new homes, which are currently exempt from LPT, into the taxation system as well as providing for all money collected locally to be retained within the county. This will also be done on the basis that those counties with a lower LPT base are adjusted via an annual national equalisation fund paid from the Exchequer, as is currently the case. It is my intention that an examination of local authority funding baselines will be considered in this context next year. In the meantime, local authority members had various tools available to them as part of the recent local authority budget process, including the LPT local adjustment factor, that they could have used to increase the funding available to their local authority and to support the delivery of services in the area.