I move amendment No. 1:
In page 3, between lines 25 and 26, to insert the following:
"4.—The Minister for the Environment, in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners, shall, within three months of the commencement of each calendar year to which this Act has application, prepare and have presented to both Houses of the Oireachtas, a report setting out the following in respect of each of the three previous calendar years—
(a) in respect of each rating authority the number of persons, the valuation of whose tenements of agricultural land in respect of which they are rated equals or exceeds the amount standing specified on the first day of the year in section 15 (3) of the Finance Act, 1974, who were not liable to pay income tax because of insufficient income but who were liable to pay rates, as provided in this Act, in the relevant year, (b) in respect of each rating authority the number of persons, the valuation of whose tenements of agricultural land exceeds £1 per acre on average and whose total valuation exceeds the amount standing specified on the first day of the year in section 15 (3) of the Finance Act, 1974, and
(c) in respect of each rating authority the extent to which the percentage increase in the county rate in the year exceeds the percentage increase in agricultural incomes in the State in the year in question or the latest year for which figures are available as determined by the Central Statistics Office.".
The amendment is to insert in page 3 of the Bill between lines 25 and 26 a new section 4. The new section would read as follows:
4—The Minister for the Environment, in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners, shall, within three months of the commencement of each calendar year to which this Act has application, prepare and have presented to both Houses of the Oireachtas, a report setting out the following in respect of each of the three previous calendar years——
There are three basic headings of information we wish to have the Minister provide a report on. They are:
(a) in respect of each rating authority the number of persons, the valuation of whose tenements of agricultural land in respect of which they are rated equals or exceeds the amount standing specified on the first day of the year in section 15 (3) of the Finance Act, 1974, who were not liable to pay income tax because of insufficient income but who were liable to pay rates, as provided in this Act, in the relevant year,
The reason for requiring this information is that it has been very obvious to us from our examination of the Bill that there are many people who as a result of the Bill will have their rates doubled on the grounds that this is a means of making them pay their fair share of taxation but who do not have incomes which, if they were being assessed only for income tax, would make them liable to pay any income tax whatever. In other words, there are many farmers who will have to pay a substantial increase in the amount of their rates as a result of this Bill who do not have taxable income in the terms in which such would be understood by people in occupations other than agriculture. This is fundamentally unjust and the State should not introduce legislation which would have that effect.
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the State must publish information which would show quite clearly the number of cases in which this would happen. It would make it quite obvious to the public and to the Oireachtas, in perusing the report we are seeking to have presented, the number of people who would have to pay substantial increases. This has an additional significance, apart from the injustice being done to those people if they do not have an income of that kind, in that bigger farmers will be able to use their rates as a set-off against the payment of income tax under the concession introduced in the second last budget. However, there will be many farmers who will not have an income that would make them liable for income tax and therefore will not have an opportunity of availing of this concession.
We have shown that there are a number of farmers with a valuation of around £40 who on average would be earning £4,000 a year and who are married with two children, with the rates payable on that land, taking average rates, and the small amount of income tax payable, they would pay twice as much as a PAYE worker with the same income and responsibilities. That is the effect of this Bill. This is the only amendment we could introduce because of the way the Bill is framed to prevent amendments because of the rules of order in the House. It is an amendment which will ensure that if injustice is being done it will be seen to be done and the evidence of the injustice will have to be provided to the House in the form of a report.
The second item on which we require information is as follows:
(b) in respect of each rating authority the number of persons, the valuation of whose tenements of agricultural land exceeds £1 per acre on average and whose total valuation exceeds the amount standing specified on the first day of the year in section 15 (3) of the Finance Act, 1974, and
Basically what we are looking for is evidence of the number of cases where land is excessively highly valued. This Bill purports to double the rates in a number of cases. These rates are based on the poor law valuations placed on land. We submit that they are fundamentally unjust and do not reflect the actual earning capacity or the relative value of the land held by different farmers. The reason this is so is that these valuations for the purpose of rates were devised in the middle of the last century, well over 100 years ago. The valuations which were devised on the basis of agricultural conditions at that time still stand. These are known as Griffith valuations. I shall give a number of examples of the injustices that occur.
In County Monaghan the land is very highly valued by comparison with the income that can be earned from it, which is very low, and the reason is that at the time Mr. Griffith was doing his valuation flax growing was very common and particularly so in Monaghan. There was a thriving linen industry in the province of Ulster at that time. As we know, the flax industry has long since disappeared. It collapsed in the early part of this century but the high valuations placed on Monaghan land still remains. Farmers in Monaghan are still paying disproportionately high rates for the simple and sole reason that in the middle of the last century their land was capable of producing flax. It had nothing to do with anything that is current or relevant at present but because it was worth a lot of money in the last century it is highly valued today and farmers are paying very high rates on it.
There is another example of land that is excessively valued at present. When Mr. Griffith was doing his valuations, when cattle used to be driven on foot to Dublin, when there were no lorries or other means of carrying cattle to Dublin, that meant that land, for instance, in Dunboyne where I live, which was within droving distance of Dublin and therefore more suitable for the production of cattle for the Dublin market, was valued much more highly than land, say, ten or 15 miles further along the county and not within droving distance of Dublin. This is now entirely irrelevant because there are lorries and it costs very little more to get a lorry to bring one's cattle from, say, Summerhill to Dublin than it does from Dunboyne. But the valuations are higher on some of the land because it was deemed to be within droving distance of the city.
Indeed, there are two farms beside one another in my parish, just over the ditch from one another, looking exactly similar in terms of their fertility or ability to produce. One of them has a valuation of £1 per acre and the other, for reasons which I cannot fathom, has a valuation of £2 per acre. Possibly the reason is that at the time Mr. Griffith did his calculation the land which was valued at £1 per acre was at that time divided into a large number of small holdings whereas the land which is valued at £2 per acre was at that time one big, single farm. Perhaps Griffith felt it would be fairer to value the smaller farm at a smaller level of valuation and put a higher valuation on the larger one, which at the time was a reasonable proposition. But it happens that at present both farms are in one large unit. The basis on which this discrimination was made in the middle of the last century between one farm and another no longer exists but the valuation continues and the farmer continues to pay rates at a very high level in one case and at a much lower level in another simply because of conditions which applied in the middle of the last century, indeed shortly after the Famine.
This has been verified very fully by a study undertaken by a gentleman named Lee in the Agricultural Institute who has shown quite clearly that the valuation system currently in force bears no relation in many cases to the productive capacity of the land in twentieth century agricultural conditions. Much work has been done in the Agricultural Institute in the soil survey which is being carried out by them from Johnstown Castle, County Wexford, which would provide the material to carry out a comprehensive revaluation of land. It has been estimated that this comprehensive revaluation of land would take approximately 13 years to complete and would cost about £10 million. Therefore, it is not something that can be done overnight. Even if the Minister were to get up here today and say that he accepted a lot of what I have said about the discrepancies in valuations, that he had decided to have land revalued so that we would have a fair system, it would not have any effect for about 13 years because we could introduce no new rating system based on new valuations until the entire country had been revalued.
What we are endeavouring to do here is to produce evidence of cases of glaring injustice, where the land is patently very much over-valued and requiring the Minister to give information on such cases in the House. I belive that by at least bringing the facts to public knowledge in the form of the report we are seeking to have presented under the provisions of this section we will create a climate of opinion which will lead to a revaluation of the land being effected. I would argue very strongly in favour of the requirements we are seeking to have made in subparagraph (b) of this amendment.
The third item on which we are seeking to have information disclosed to the House by the Minister is as follows:
in respect of each rating authority the extent to which the percentage increase in the county rate in the year exceeds the percentage increase in agricultural incomes in the State in the year in question or the latest year for which figures are available as determined by the Central Statistics Office.
That item of information is of very great relevance in this year because this Bill will provide for the effective doubling of the rates of many farmers in 1980. In a year in which the incomes of those same farmers have fallen by anything between 9 per cent and 20 per cent could anything be more unjust than to increase their burden of taxation dramatically. Yet that is precisely what this Bill proposes to do. It is doing it most markedly in the case, not of big farmers—the big farmers, if they have a sufficient income to pay income tax, can set off their rates against such liability, thus mitigating the effects of this Bill to some considerable degree—but in the case of small farmers who do not have an income of sufficient size to pay income tax and who cannot set off the increased rates to be levied under this Bill against anything. They must pay them in full without any hope of ever having them recouped. Those very farmers with valuations of between £40 and £60 are those on whom the Minister is now seeking to have this very significantly increased rate levied.
I believe that the information we are seeking here will be very useful and that it will show quite clearly the movements of farm incomes and of rates. Obviously, if the rates are increasing by a lesser amount than agricultural incomes in a given year, that information also will be shown as a result of this report. I have no objection to that information being brought forward either if in a particular year it happens to be the case, but the important thing is to establish, as this amendment seeks to do, that there be some relationship between the amount of tax people have to pay and the amount of income they are actually able to earn. The signal characteristic of this Bill is that it proposes to increase very dramatically the rates that people are having to pay in a year in which their incomes are actually falling. The Minister may claim that there might be difficulty in obtaining some of this information. I would point out that we are asking that this information be provided no later than three months after the end of the year to which it applies. Therefore, the Minister will have at least three months in which to gather the information. Secondly, we are making it clear he will not have to get the information on his own, that a responsibility will rest with the Revenue Commissioners to co-operate with the Minister to provide statistics that he has not got but that they will have.
Paragraph (b) relates to the valuations of tenements of agricultural land where valuations exceed £1 per acre. Information on this should be readily available in every local authority on the basis of survery map material and records in rate books. I am certain that once that information is provided for any year there would not be any additional cost in providing it for subsequent years unless the valuation system is changed altogether or a position is arrived at where more farmers will be brought into the tax net.
As far as paragraph (a) is concerned, the Revenue Commissioners will have information on all farmers whose valuations are in excess of £40. They will be sending out income tax demands and they will know at the end of each year of farmers who have incomes which would put them into the tax net. If they have such incomes, farmers will be sending in cheques and if they have not they will not be sending in cheques, and the Revenue Commissioners can arrive at the figure required by paragraph (a) simply by subtracting the total number of farmers who have sent in cheques for income tax or who are liable to do so from the number who have valuations in excess of £40, and the result will be the figure required to be provided. Therefore, there is no great difficulty in providing that information.
In regard to paragraph (c), equally the information can be provided quite easily. Apart from any changes which may occur in the allowances, something the Minister can calculate easily, increases in the county rate will be uniform throughout the country, or so it seems and so it has been for the past three years because the Minister has been insisting on a 10 per cent or 11 per cent increase. Therefore, it will be easy to get the increase in the county rate each year. Equally it will be easy to estimate the increase in agricultural incomes throughout the State in the year in question. Substantial farm income statistics are compiled by the Central Statistics Office and by the Farm Management Survey of the Agricultural Institute. Therefore there should not be any difficulty in obtaining comparable information on agricultural incomes.
I hope the Minister will not come in and claim that it would be administratively impossible, that it would impose an intolerable burden, to provide this information. As I have demonstrated, it would be no such thing. The information could be presented with great ease if the Minister set his mind to do so. If the Minister does not accept that, the only conclusion I can draw is not that he cannot present the information but the he will not present it because he has something to hide, because he does not want to let the Oireachtas or the public know of the incontrovertible fact that there are many farmers who will be paying substantially increased rates because of this Bill who would not have been liable for income tax, and that therefore there are substantial numbers of farmers who will be paying massive increases in rates if agricultural incomes increase.
If the Minister is not prepared to present the information we are looking for the only conclusion we can draw is that he simply wants to hide it from the public, that he does not want farmers to see the full magnitude of the injustice being perpetrated by this Bill. From my experience of talking to farmers, they are only now beginning to realise the magnitude of the injustice imposed by this Bill. Small farmers are realising that as a result their rates will be doubled, that they will be paying twice as much in rates as people with equivalent incomes will be paying income tax.
The Minister may have thought he would be able to get this Bill through the House relatively quietly without too much publicity, but I can tell him that farmers are beginning to realise what is the position facing them. The result of this Bill will be to excite all the feelings of injustice generated against the 2 per cent levy last year.
