The spectre of Fianna Fáil members playing fantasy-land politics on selective Chamber of Commerce soapboxes around the country by suggesting that commercial rates should be cut in half, will hit the business community most, stated Carlow & Kilkenny TD, Ann Phelan.

"Short-term fantasy land politics is an insult to the intelligence of those people paying commercial rates whose livelihoods will suffer most from a weak local government system."

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Speaking in the Dáil, she said: "It was the business community itself which created this noble concept of local government to address its needs for public roads, footpaths, lights etc and to provide homestead comforts.

"It was a Fianna Fáil Government in 1977 which landed business and enterprise into the unjust position it is in today as the single commercial rates supporter of local services. That they not only ruined the most essential public service needed by every man woman and child, but damaged it to a condition from which it has never fully recovered.

"Now is the time to genuinely assist the business community by spreading the burden wider and fairer", Deputy Phelan concluded.

(CD)