The Supreme Court has allowed the Commissioner of Valuation’s appeal over rateability at two Kilsaran Concrete manufacturing sites, ruling that the Valuation Tribunal was entitled to reject a blanket exemption for the asphalt and concrete plants.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice O’Donnell on 26 October 2016, concerned appeals about how the Valuation Act 2001 treats plant used in manufacturing. The question was whether equipment across each production process qualified for exemption because ingredients were ultimately changed in a mixing pan, or whether the exemption applied only to particular plant designed or used primarily to induce that change.
One appeal concerned an asphalt plant at a quarry at Ballinascorney Upper, Brittas, County Dublin. The other concerned a ready-mix concrete plant at the Tallaght Bypass, Oldbawn, Tallaght. The source says the mixing pan in each plant was accepted as qualifying for exemption. Kilsaran argued for wider treatment of the installations as integrated processes.
The Valuation Tribunal had rejected blanket exemptions. It concluded that the asphalt’s physical or chemical change began in the mixing pan, and that the concrete constituents did not change until they were mixed there. The High Court later found that the Tribunal had erred in law, reasoning that the process included the equipment leading to and from the mixing pan.
On appeal, the Supreme Court considered the statutory wording and earlier decisions. It held that the law did not impose an absolute requirement that the process of change occur inside the specific construction for which exemption was claimed. But that did not mean the whole installation could be treated as exempt. The relevant question was whether an individual item was designed or used primarily to induce a process of change in the substance it contained or transmitted.
The court said the Tribunal was entitled to find that silos, hoppers and conveyor belts were primarily used to store, size or transmit materials, while the process of change was induced when the ingredients were mixed. It reversed the High Court’s decision and answered the legal questions in both appeals in the Commissioner’s favour.
The judgment addressed the legal basis for exemption. It did not state a new valuation for either plant. For the asphalt appeal, it recorded that the Tribunal had treated the rateable element as having a net annual value of €63,000, agreed by the parties on a without-prejudice basis.