Bill to abolish water charges to be passed before poll

THE Government has published the Bill providing for the retention of motor taxation by local authorities and the abolition of domestic water and sewerage charges.

Government sources said that it was intended to have the Local Government (Financial Provisions) Bill enacted before a general election is called.

Though the Opposition parties are critical of the Bill, Fianna Fail said last night that the party would support the Bill and amend it when it got into power.

The Bill's main provisions, published by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, yesterday, are to remove the power of local authorities to make charges for supplying domestic water and domestic sewerage services, to allow local authorities to retain car tax, and to permit local variations of car tax rates.

Claiming that he had local government funding as one of his priorities, Mr Howl in said the Bill provided for the establishment of an Equalisation Fund. Its resources would be used in 1997 to ensure that the income lost through the abolition of domestic water and sewerage charges and the rate support grant would be made good in full to each local authority and that there was an equitable sharing out of the buoyancy the new system would deliver.

Under the Bill, 20 per cent of car tax, other motor tax, driver licence fees, other miscellaneous fees and duties and any funds that the Oireachtas might determine would be paid into the fund.

Another section enables the Minister to establish, by order, a Local Government (Equalisation) Council to manage the Equalisation Fund, to decide on payments from it and to carry out other functions allocated to it.

Local authorities which collect motor tax are empowered, in the Bill, to increase the national rates of taxation on cars and motorcycles to a maximum of 3 per cent in 1998 and up to a maximum of 6 per cent thereafter.

The Fianna Fail spokesman on the environment, Mr Noel Dempsey, said he was opposed to funding local government by motor taxation. Whereas the recent abolition of water charges was, in effect, anti rural in its character, the Minister's Bill was clearly anti motorist in its content.

Fianna Fail which will set out its own policy on water charges and local government reform today, found it both unacceptable and inequitable that the Government had targeted the motorist.

The Progressive Democrats environment spokeswoman, Ms Mairin Quill, said her party had long argued that money raised through road taxes should be retained locally. A proportion should be spent on improving road surfaces and upgrading road safety. Under the Minister's proposals, it was her belief that motorists would be penalised more severely.