Clerys chief sees tax changes in store

CLERYS CHIEF PJ Timmins doesn’t often put his head above the parapet but when he does, his views are well worth an airing.

Timmins, who is currently president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, favours the ban on upwards-only rent reviews.

“Turnover-related rents align the interests of the tenant and landlord closely together and would be much more the norm in lots of other countries,” he told me earlier this week.

Timmins accepts that the taxation regime here will have to change significantly.

“I would favour a model I saw in Finland a number of years ago whereby people paid for [state- provided] services but the amount they paid was dependent on their income level and how many dependants they had.

“That’s how you paid for everything that you procured from government and brought about a rationalisation in certain services.”

How about a reduction in the VAT rate to stimulate consumer demand? “I’d love to see a reduction in the VAT rate . . . but we must also be realistic and understand there isn’t a lot of scope there.”

Timmins has strong views on the development of tourism in Dublin and believes the opening next year of the National Conference Centre – which should bring plenty of high-spenders here – should be a catalyst for a major improvement of the docklands site.

“We’ve got quite a few social problems that we need to deal with,” he says. “There’s still a lot of drug treatment centres in that area between the National Conference Centre and the city centre, there’s [also] a lot of alcoholic treatment areas.

“We need to deal holistically with these people in a sympathetic way. There’s not many of them from the city centre, most tend to be from the suburbs.

“We really need to focus on cleaning up that area and inject cultural things into the area.”

Timmins also wants to see the long-awaited proposals on curbing “commercial begging” brought forward by the Government. “There’s a great deal of commercial begging in the city centre and its going to get worse if we don’t tackle it.”