Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

During the Seanad campaign of 2016, every candidate from all parties and none knew exactly where councillors stood on pay and conditions. Various issues came up at that time, especially pensions and how the PRSI rate they paid did not qualify them for the contributory pension and an increase in pay for the extra work they did, particularly in the context of boundary changes and the abolition of town councils. After that election I put down a Commencement matter here to the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection that councillors would qualify for the contributory pension. The then Minister, now Taoiseach, came to the House and took the debate and said that he would look into it. He addressed the issue and councillors will qualify for their contributory pension now that their PRSI goes towards it. In light of the Moorhead report, the Government should pay councillors immediately. I think they deserve it. It is acknowledged that they will get an additional €8,000 and that might be backdated to whenever the local elections were held. A large percentage of councillors are new. For some, it is their full-time job. Will the Minister of State address the issue of pay once and for all, and pay them?We would all like to speak on the Moorhead report, and I hope we will have a debate in the House on the report when it is published. There will be more to the Moorhead report than councillors' pay and conditions. I am sure it will also deal with the workload of councillors. Will the Minister tell the House how much interaction there was between the representative bodies for the local authorities - the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, and the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA - regarding the Moorhead report? Did Ms Moorhead consult widely with those organisations and how many other organisations were involved in the work of compiling the report? It is very important that those organisations were consulted widely. The Minister of State is putting in place a structure that will be there for the next 50 years and it requires great detail and study. I welcome and support the call for a debate on the report when it is published.

In the review of the Valuation Act 2001, the Minister of State has proposed to bring in a rate limitation order. I suppose a rate limitation order means a kind of freeze on a valuation when a revaluation is done in a particular county or local authority where, whatever the rate for a valuation in the county at a particular time, the following year the valuation would be revalued where some properties might go up while others go down but overall there would be no loss of revenue on the previous year's revenue. This has many consequences for people in business. In some cases I do not believe it takes the businesses into consideration. Many businesses are on long leases at €20,000, €30,000 or €100,000 a year, and all of a sudden with two or three years into a long lease - and without ever taking this into consideration - they find their rates could increase by €5,000, €10,000 or €15,000 per year. In the business plans they put forward to banks or other lending institutions they would not have taken this increase into account. It can and will put a lot of pressure on those businesses where they have no choice but to pay the rates. At the same time they had no provision or inclination that their rates would increase by such a huge percentage. The Minister of State brought in new legislation some months ago around where areas can be redesignated or where rates can be reduced. This is for a whole area or part of a town, however, and it does not provide for individual cases where business people operate throughout the State on long leases. It is a problem for them.

There are a few areas where the council lines should be more clear. Consider what happened with councils previously. If a town wanted an extension to a water scheme or a sewerage scheme a council or a councillor would bring forward a proposal or a motion to extend the scheme. I am not sure how this works now with Irish water. How does a town get an extension to a sewerage scheme or to its water scheme? What are the mechanics involved? Are we completely dependent on Irish Water to review local authority sewerage and water schemes every five or ten years or is there a feed in to Irish Water from the local authorities? Is this through the executive of the local authority or do local authority members have an input into formalising or bringing proposals forward to get such extensions to sewerage and water schemes? Nobody knows better what is happening on the ground than the local councillors. They know what is happening in the local town and where the pressure is on for water or sewerage. The local councillor probably knows a lot more about the pressures with these issues than Irish Water does in Dublin, or wherever its headquarters are.

Enterprise offices do tremendous work throughout the country but in many cases there is a shortfall in funding. The enterprise offices nurture and help small businesses and start-ups. They have great expertise developed in the vast majority of those enterprise offices. If they had a little bit more funding there could be a basis for them to do a much better job in providing start-up funding for one, two or ten jobs. This may not be the Minister of State's Department, it could be a combination of Departments, including the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation. These enterprises can lead to quite a considerable number of jobs. I believe that every Member of the House would agree that the local enterprise offices do tremendous work, but if they had a little more money to give out they would do a good job at giving it out. Perhaps the Minister of State's Department could look at this to give them some extra funding. Such funding is not wasted and is put to good use. It goes towards starting up good businesses.

In the Minister of State's speech to the House today-----