Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome both contributors and thank them for their presentations. I would like to focus for a minute on the property tax. I do not agree with the notion of a site valuation tax. Support for or against it is, I suppose, based on one's general experience. There is usually a nice social mix of housing in rural villages. Often there could be one large house, built by a professional who had the means to do so, next door to a more modest house which meets the needs of its occupants and is on a site of the same value as the large house. For this reason, I would be concerned about concentrating our focus on a site valuation tax. I am interested in hearing Dr. Sean Healy's view, given his understanding of social mix and the dispersal of population, on how a site valuation tax might work negatively in this regard. While it may not necessarily lead to ghettoisation, it could impact negatively on the way in which rural parts of Ireland nicely knit together. I believe the tax would be better reflected on the property rather than the site.