Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I supported the home extension scheme, the logic being that it would generate work for builders and so on and obviously would be of some benefit to ordinary householders seeking to carry out renovations. However, when one starts to extend it to landlords - I might not have as much of a problem with small-scale landlords with one or two properties - against a background where major investors appear to be moving in and buying up huge amounts of property in this State over recent years on the back of the crash and then there are these REIT entities, with which they will get tax breaks thereon, will the biggest beneficiaries of this provision not be wealthy investors? The Minister might argue it is worth it because it will generate some employment but my concern is that this is simply another tax break for wealthy investors and we are reverting to incentivising the kind of thing that led us into the mess, which was the property boom and bust that did such damage to this economy. What does the Minister have to say in response to this concern?