Michael Murphy (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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477. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government to provide the extent of commercial rates arrears carried by each local authority, for each of the past five years; the local authorities carrying arrears outside of that five year period; the extent of commercial rates arrears written off by each local authority, each year for the past five years, in tabular form. [14210/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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Local authorities are under a statutory obligation to levy rates on any property used for commercial purposes in accordance with the details entered in the valuation lists prepared by Tailte Éireann under the Valuation Acts 2001 to 2020. The levying and collection of rates are matters for each individual local authority.

Information in relation to Commercial Rates Income and Collection data is available in Appendix 7 of each local authority's Annual Financial Statement. 2023 is the latest year for which audited local authority annual financial statement data is available.

The commercial rates arrears and commercial rates written off by each local authority from 2019 to 2023 are set out in the tables below. Commercial rates are only written off by local authorities after they have exhausted all means of collecting outstanding amounts owing, and it is considered that those outstanding amounts are irrecoverable.

The Local Government Audit Service provide an independent audit of local authorities annual financial statements and a summary of their findings, titled Overview of the Work of the Local Government Audit Service, is published annually on my Department's website at the following link:

www.gov.ie/en/collection/5e9c7-overview-of-the-work-of-the-local-government-audit-service/

Data in relation to commercial rates arrears prior to 2019 can be found in the Local Government Audit Service reports.