The High Court ruled that parts of asphalt and concrete manufacturing plants directly and immediately involved in the production process may fall within an exclusion from rateability under the Valuation Act 2001.
Mr Justice Hedigan gave the ruling on 7 December 2010 in two cases stated by the Valuation Tribunal. Kilsaran Concrete had challenged the tribunal’s legal interpretation after it found that the plants were not exempt as a whole and treated them as separate items of plant.
The cases concerned a quarry and asphalt plant at Ballinascorney Upper, Brittas, and a concrete works at the Tallaght By-Pass, Oldbawn. The tribunal had determined rateable valuations of €332,500 for the quarry premises, including an agreed €63,000 net annual valuation for the asphalt plant, and €100,000 for the concrete works.
The company argued that each installation should be considered as a construction whose parts were used to induce a process of change. The Commissioner of Valuation submitted that any process of change occurred only in the mixing pans and that the exclusion could apply only to the specific plant element where the change happened.
The judgment described the manufacturing processes. Asphalt ingredients are heated and combined, with the bitumen undergoing an irreversible change. In concrete production, cement and water react when mixed, and hardening begins soon after production. The tribunal had found that no physical or chemical change occurred in the ingredients before they reached the mixing pans, and declined to grant a blanket exemption.
The High Court held that the tribunal had misdirected itself in law by treating the plants as separate items for this purpose. Interpreting “inducing a process of change” as a series of actions leading to and from the mixing pan, the judge said the exclusion could cover plant parts directly and immediately involved in that process. He described these as extending from the ingredient silos through to transmission from the mixing pan into containers ready to leave the site.
The court answered “no” to both questions posed: the tribunal was not correct in law to find that the asphalt and concrete plants were not exempt under Schedule 5, paragraph 1. The ruling addressed the legal interpretation on the case stated; the judgment does not state revised rateable valuations for either property.