Development levies imposed by local authorities on new houses have nothing to do with benchmarking, according to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen.
Under the Planning and Development Act 2000, local authorities have to come up with a new scheme for levies on new houses by March 14, 2004 or face losing funding to put in place infrastructure programmes.
Mr Cullen today denied claims that levies imposed by councils on developers had anything to do with the cost of benchmarking to councils.
He said the levies have been in place since 1964 and were to pay for public and community facilities in an area and the money raised from levies could not be used by councils for anything other than infrastructural or facilities programmes. The new scheme of levies are to show transparency in the process.
"These levies have been in place since 1964. What I'm doing is making it much more transparent from a public point-of-view," Mr Cullen told RTÉ news.
The Minister also dismissed claims that levies in some local authorities could be as high as €28,000.
"People are just plucking figures from the air," he said.
However, director of the Irish home builders Association, Mr Hubert Fitzpatrick, said that levies were going to increase "three-fold" in some cases.
He said in Fingal County Council the charge was going to be €140 per square metre for residential and €100 for commercial developments.
A spokesperson for Dún Laoghaire County Council said the levy charged to developers for building new homes in its jurisdiction was €11,500.
Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Chambers of Commerce of Ireland has said he "supported the introduction of service levies on new houses that are to be imposed by local authorities".
Mr John Dunne said: "Every house that is built represents an increased cost to local authorities in terms of services and it is not unreasonable that the people who are going to live in the houses and benefit from these services should have to contribute".
"At the moment, small and medium sized enterprises (SME's), which are struggling to survive, are being forced to fund the provision of services for new houses through rising commercial rates and, in many cases, these SMEs are not benefiting in any way from the development of more houses in their areas," he said.