asked the Minister for the Environment how he proposes to ensure that those people in receipt of a waiver of rates in previous years will not now be deprived of the relative benefit they enjoyed; and how he will ensure that these people are exempt from paying the indirect taxation or other levies used to make up the loss of revenue on rates.

The effect of the Government's rates policy is to abolish domestic rates for all including those who might, heretofore, have succeeded in obtaining a waiver of all or part of their rates liability.

The second part of the question does not arise.

Is the Minister aware that for example last year in Dublin something like 20,000 families benefited to the tune of £1 million in a waiver of rates and that eventually these people will have to bear the burden of taxation which will permeate through the whole social system? Does the Minister see this as a loss of the relative advantages they enjoyed?

The question of extra taxation does not arise. That part of the question is hypothetical. If they were getting a waiver of rates because of their circumstances this has always been the case. Wherever people are unable to pay rates the manager was always empowered to waive the rates at the end of the year. There is nothing new in the waiving of rates. Those people benefited from that because of their circumstances. Now they do not have to apply for a waiver of rates, they automatically get it.

Does the Minister agree that there is a situation where an advantage which people were getting will be lost in two or three years, and this puts them in a difficult financial position?

This is a question on the Order Paper which the Minister has answered.

I am trying to tease out the implications of it. Will they be paying for something which they are not now paying for?

Will the Minister confirm that as a result of the Government's removal of rates on domestic dwellings and also on corporation rented accommodation, people who previously benefited under the waiver of rates scheme will now benefit without being subject to the means test to which they had to submit themselves previously, and that they will now have the right to the total exemption of rates without a means test?

I agree with what the Deputy has said. They will not have to go through the business of applying now.