A new visitor accommodation levy may be on the way

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1:06legislation that could give Dublin Councils the option to charge a visitor accommodation levee is being brought before the doll green party counselor for Dublin Southwest inner city Michael Pigeon something like good morning Michael. Good morning thanks for having me on how would this work? So essentially it works in the same way that works in about two thirds of EU countries where there would be a small charge usually in the range of one or two percent or could be a fixed amount like one or two euro on a hotel bill and that would go to local councils to improve things that would improve things for people who live in that area but also for tourists themselves things like street cleaning public events improving kind of the streets that sort of thing. Okay I'm already positive. I was looking this week though at I have to stay in Dublin and I was looking at hotels and the cheapest hotel I was finding in Dublin was about 270 euro and which makes it a little bit prohibitive when somebody is coming to Dublin ad just for work. You're I mean anything that's loading on top of that I'm going do we need it? Yeah I understand that but I think ultimately

2:08if you'd look to this and it was 272 euro I'm not sure it'll make a substantial difference either either to you or to your decision to come and that's why as I said about two thirds of government for work I come for work so it is a way to differentiate between people who are common for the jolies to go along and go on the Viking splash tour and people who are traveling for legitimate work reasons. I think the smartest thing to do is just set it at a level that's relatively small and there are some countries where they they set it quite high like Amsterdam is the highest in the world it's 12.5% of your hotel bill which I think is way too high but if it's if it's in the range of one or two euro or one percent or something like that then I think it's simpler rather than trying to decide whose whose visitors legitimate or not. Also the idea is to make sure that I kind of like the universal I understand that and local authorities do need that right and I come to a reason how they could do it in a moment but when you introduce attacks of any kind think universal social charge there's only one direction it goes Michael it doesn't go down

3:10I don't think that's totally true and if you look if you look at it hotel bed taxes around the world because again we don't have to reinvent the wheel here there's lots of countries that have this they've generally stayed at a very very low level Amsterdam's kind of the outlier but generally they stay at kind of a one or two percent level for the simple reason that people get this they don't want to drive away to us it's just about making sure that there's a contribution paid to the city that the city or the town or the area that they're visiting to try and make it nicer. Why don't local authorities use the option that is there for them to increase property tax if they're looking for money and they need to get it from somewhere it's the easiest thing in the world to do the reason they don't do it is because the people who vote for you would have to pay that it's easier to tax the tourist. Well I've already taken the very own popular decision to raise property tax about two years ago in the city but I'll tell you it like I think the idea is just about ensuring that everyone pays a bet like if you live in a city you would pay as you say local property tax be also pay income tax motor tax all this sort of stuff in order to maintain the city I think it's fair that people

4:13who are visiting would pay a small contribution obviously not going to pay as much as you would in property tax or income tax but it's I think reasonable that a tourist would make a direct contribution as well and that's I think the logic of why this is rolling out why it has been rolled out in so many countries but also why the UK is recently given cities the power to to implement something like this because it's just about making sure that everyone makes a contribution and I think that's particularly true in Ireland where things like museums or a lot of national sites are free to visit I think that's a really good deal I really like that we keep it but I think it's fair that part of that should be funded directly from a small charge on tourists. If this was to happen is there a way of ring fencing the money so that it is used for certain purposes or is this going to go into the great melting part of Dublin City Council because it could be used either to fill a portal or to put up a new painting in the council's headquarters. Well I've no issue of fixing the bottles but there's a build that came in or is going to be brought into the door by Paul McCollough who's a really good phenophilial TV and his proposal for this is that the

5:16council would have to specify at the start of each year exactly how it's going to be spent and there be a set number of areas where this money could be spent so to my mind the smartest thing to do would be to put it into things where both tourists and people who live in the safety benefit so in Dublin for example I could imagine that being something like street cleaning it could be something like public events where which would be nice for tourists but also nice for people who live there. In terms of like the amount it raised the actual difference it could make if you look at a 1% charge in Dublin they reckon it would bring in somewhere between 12 and 15 million year or a year that's over 250 extra street cleaners like you can actually do stuff with this money that would I think have a measurable that drop in the bookish compared to what the amount that is given to Dublin City Council by the ex-Jekker is and what is generated by the property tax and we were like what's the point to do for just 50 million it's a lot of money individually but for something that is going to inevitably annoy people is it worth it? Sure I've been through seven council budgets at this stage now and the big thing that is noticeable and difficult in Ireland in

6:19particular is that pretty much every penny that comes into a council is already earmarked by national government for one specific use or another. The advantage of a tourist tax is that a council can flexibly actually decide we want to really go at street cleaning and instead of having to write a letter begging for money from the minister they can actually use the resources themselves so that's what I think is partially so attractive about this is that the money isn't directed and it's not being told how to spend it they can decide what the city needs for itself and go to the city. God forbid we might actually let local authorities spend the money where it needs to be spent. Michael Pitch and Green Party Councilor for Dublin's Southwest inner city thanks very much for joining us.