Council boss promises to "pursue relentlessly" those who owe levies

People who money in development levies to Meath County Council "will be pursued relentlessly", Meath County Manager Tom Dowling said this week. A special finance meeting of the council on Monday was told that €28.30 million was owed to it in fees. This was made up of 809 residential one-off accounts totalling €8.25 million; 257 commercial and residential estates owing €12.13 million, and €7.92 million, respectively. Mr Dowling said: "We are serious about collecting the balance of levies." Council official Liam Henry added: "Our commitment is to recover all outstanding levies. We are reviewing each outstanding case." There were calls from a number of councillors for the revenue collection staff to be increased in order to get this money in. Describing how levies are processed, council officials said that levies were determined at the grant of planning permission stage and were payable as per conditions of the permission. The council uses as system - IPLAN, currently the national template for recording levies - to record and manage planning applications and decisions. The system was not a financial management system but designed as a planning register and an application tracking system. When an application is granted, the levies payable for the development are entered on IPLAN. When a commencement notice is received, IPLAN records the total levies potentially due for the full development. However, the council said that this was not the actual amount due at that stage. The net amount was a constantly evolving figure. Outlining the factors influencing what money is due to the council, an official said there may be revisions to the original planning permission, there may be a withering of the planning permission after five years, there may be Bord Pleanala decisions, as well as exemptions from levies for social/affordable housing, in additon to other factors, including the developer's liquidity. The council said the total levies conditioned in planning permissions before revisions 2002-2009 (gross figure) was €237.528 million. The adjusted amount due now was €183.901m and the total paid to date was €155.593m, leaving a gross balance due of €28.308 million. Officials defended their collection rate of 84.6 per cent. Details were also given of the action being taken to chase up the €28.308 million owed to the council. Every account had been notified of the amount owed and the files for sites with multiple permissions had been reviewed. Site visits were ongoing to establish the up-to-date stage of development, commercial developments were receiving particular attention, and outstanding levies were being pursued in all cases. Letters were being issued to all individual houseowners, there was ongoing telephone contact with individual houseowners, and site visits to individual houses had commenced. Enforcement action would be taken, officials pledged. Councillors heard that there were two sources of income available to the council - levies and loans. So far this year, it had taken in €5.8 million and expected to get a total of €8 million by the end of the year. Cllr Nick Killian said that if the council had the €28 million owed to it in levies and other charges, it would be in a much better financial position this year and in the future. He asked how many staff were engaged in revenue collection for the council and said: "This is a business and we have to get sufficient numbers of staff to chase up this money." Council head of finance Fiona Lawless said the council now had six revenue collectors, whereas it had 11 just a few years ago. Cllr Joe Reilly said that in terms of the €28 million owed to the council, it was conceivable that a lot of the developers who owed fees to the council "may end up in Nama". Cllr John Farrelly said that because of the situation in the economy, "an awful lot of people are coming to us asking how they are going to pay their levies".