The purpose of this Bill is to make further and, I suppose as a preamble might say, better provision for the relief of agricultural land from rates during the current year and next year. Briefly, the provisions of the Bill confirm the announcement which the Minister for Finance made in the course of his Budget speech as to how the additional sum of over £1,000,000, which he proposes to provide for the relief of rates on agricultural land, would be disposed of. The House is aware, of course, that the present grant is administered and distributed in accordance with provisions of the Rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Act, 1939, which provides that the grant will be given in three allowances which are known as the primary allowance, the employment allowance and the supplementary allowance respectively. This Bill proposes to continue the system of giving relief under three heads, but under the Bill the existing allowances will be considerably increased. According to the estimates which we have been able to form up to the present, the primary allowance will now take £1,827,000. That approximates relatively closely to the total amount of the present grant under all three heads. In addition, the employment allowances are likely to absorb £587,000 odd, and the supplementary allowances another £464,000. Any Senator who is good at mental arithmetic can calculate what these sums will amount to. They will amount to about £2,880,000.
The proposals in this Bill depart in a fundamental way from the provisions of any Bill relating to or providing for grants in relief of rates on agricultural land which has hitherto been enacted, because under this Bill no fixed amount is settled for the agricultural grant. The total grant will be the amount needed to give the reliefs prescribed by the Bill. These reliefs, as I have said, will take the form of primary, employment and supplementary allowances. The sum provided for primary allowances this year and next year, instead of being a fixed amount as formerly, will be three-fifths of the general county rate for the year, and will, therefore, vary as the county rate varies. The supplementary allowance will be one-fifth of the general rate and will be allowed on the whole valuation above £20, and it also will vary, as in the case of the primary allowance, as the general rate varies. In addition to these two allowances, there will be an employment allowance, but it will be at a much higher rate than the existing employment allowance. Hitherto the employment allowance varied according to the primary rate of relief, and on the average it worked out at about £3 for each worker. As, however, the supplementary allowance was granted in respect of any valuation over £20 for which an employment allowance was not obtainable, the net advantage to the occupiers was only about 30/- per man employed. Under the present Bill, the average net employment allowance will be more than trebled, as it is proposed to raise the allowance to a maximum of £6 10s. 0d. per man employed, and to make it a uniform rate throughout the country.
This Bill, I should say, will not affect agricultural land in urban districts. This year the occupiers of these lands will be dealt with under the Act of 1939 and will get the share of the agricultural grant as it stood last year. The provision for that is made under sub-section (2) of Section 10 of the Bill. Next year, however, Sections 21 and 25 of the Local Government Act of 1946 will apply, and these sections, as the House may recollect, provide for the differential rating of land in urban districts and the agricultural grant will be paid into a municipal fund.
Turning to the text of the Bill, the general rate is defined in Section 1 and except in County Dublin the general rate means the total rate levied over the whole county health district for any purpose except the defrayment of compensation for criminal injuries. Cork County presents a special feature in this regard, as there are three county health districts within that county and each of them has its own general rate. I have mentioned that, under the Bill, uniformity in the ratio of allowances to the rate will obtain over the whole country and this will include Dublin County, but in that county, though there is a single county health district, there are three public assistance districts, each of which has its own rate. It is to meet this case that the reference is made in Section 1 to a public assistance district when defining the expression "general rate in the pound". A further consequence flows from the definition of a general rate, as given in the Bill, for this definition makes it clear that, for the purpose of the Bill, all rates levied over the whole of the rating area, county health district or public assistance district, as the case may be, for any purpose except the purpose of defraying a charge for criminal injuries will be taken as a general rate. Some councils will find this a very substantial concession.
Section 2 prescribes that the period for which the Act will be in operation will be this year and next year. Section 3 is an important section, since it not only provides that all the additional agricultural grant of £370,000 which was given under the 1939 Act will continue, but it goes on in sub-section (2) to provide that the county councils will be entitled to get the difference between the sum allocated to them under paragraph (a) of sub-section (3) of Section 4 of the 1939 Act and any deficiencies in the revenue which, but for the new increase in the grants, would arise out of the reliefs given in the Bill. It will be obvious that the provisions in this section remove the fixed limit which hitherto has been placed on the amount of the agricultural grant.
Section 4 has been made necessary by reason of the fact that a new rating system was prescribed in the Local Government Act this year for land in urban districts. In view of this provision, it has been necessary to redefine the specified valuation. There is, in fact, no significant change in it. Section 5 provides that the scale of primary allowances is to be equivalent to three-fifths of the general rate.
Section 6 deals with the new supplementary allowance and, as I have already explained, it differs from the old in being an allowance on the whole of the valuation over £20 and will be fixed at one-fifth of the general rate. In Section 7 the provisions relating to employment allowances will be found. Sub-section (3) is a new provision which enables the county councils to receive claims up to the 1st February in a financial year in respect of which the employment allowance is claimed.
Section 8 safeguards any occupier whose rates on land this year under the Bill might be greater than they would be under the Act of 1939. Section 9 will allow for reliefs being given by way of credit notes this year.
Section 10 suspends the operation of those sections of the Act of 1939, which will be temporarily suspended by the Bill, that is to say, Section 11 of the Act of 1939, which contains provisions in relation to urban districts. I should explain also that Section 11 of the Act of 1939 has been wholly repealed by the Local Government Act this year, but the repeal will not come into operation until next April. The section, therefore, will continue in operation this year. Similarly, in regard to Section 12 of the Act of 1939, which was partially repealed by the Act of 1946. Those are all the provisions of the Bill
