CROSS PARTY consensus on local taxation has been called for by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin. Otherwise, all parties would be vulnerable to single issue candidates at the next general election, it was suggested at a local government conference yesterday.
In speech to the annual conference of the General Council of County Councils in Galway, the Minister suggested the mood may be right for a cross party consensus, not only on reform of local government financing, but also of local authority structures and functions to ensure a better service to the public.
If there is to be the radical reform of local government that is so urgently required in Ireland, the options for a different mix of taxation, including local sales tax, local income tax and local property tax, must be addressed, Mr Howlin said.
The call for the consensus approach was supported by some delegates who warned that single issue candidates standing on service charges or roads issues in the next general election posed a threat to the major parties.
Senator Frank Fahey (FF) predicted that nothing would come from the Government on local taxation in advance of the election.
But he supported a consensus approach and suggested that the Seanad establish an all party committee to review options for a year before bringing specific proposals to the Dail.
However, later yesterday, the Fianna Fail spokesman on the Environment, Mr Noel Dempsey, called on Mr Howlin to "spell out" his dynamic new form of local government.
"The Minister is trying to avoid his responsibilities, he is trying to endorse a situation where politicians will start talking in terms of whether local charges should come or go. I'm certainly not going to sit down with the Minister and agree to a consensus on how the Government can raise charges without having any real say in local government reforms.
"There has been too much ad-hoc reactions to such threats. The possible loss of seats to single issue candidates was the worst possible motive for cobbling together a solution to local government reform", said Mr Dempsey.
Mr Howl in stressed there could be no increase in the overall burden of taxation on the community in the context of a review of tax or charge options. He confirmed that the first stage of the KPMG report on financing of local authorities is to be published, possibly next week, with his attitude to funding options.
The options for a different mix of taxation, including local sales tax, local income tax and local property tax, had to be addressed. We needed to explore these options further and to see how the Residential Property Tax and local service charges would fit into any new system, he said.
He was committed to reform despite the attractions of what was called the "no change, no worries, no mistakes, no political risks" option.
. Senator Sam McAughtry spoke again yesterday about his disapproval of the way, in his view, Sinn Fein was using the Irish language in Northern Ireland as a political weapon, bouncing its cultural bullets mainly off Dr Ian Paisley's DUP.
Addressing the annual conference of the General Council of County Councils in Galway, Mr McAughtry said that, in demanding that street names and litter bins in Belfast be bilingually labelled, Sinn Fein was using Irish culture as a political weapon.
Notwithstanding the Sinn Fein stance, Dr Paisley's attitude to all things Irish needed correcting, he felt. While it had been suggested that the Irish language could be a powerful force for reconciliation, almost all Protestants held the view that "if to speak Irish means to be like Sinn Fein/IRA, even though the (British) government spends millions on its teaching, you can shove it".
