Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is farcical that an amendment that seeks deletion of a line from the legislation has been ruled out of order. It is an absolute disgrace and really frustrating for me as an elected representative tasked to represent my constituency and deal with the finance portfolio. There is a need for change in this area. As I said to the Minister for Finance yesterday there is a need for reform of how we deal with financial and budgetary matters. The current system is an affront.

The amendment which has been ruled out of order sought that subsection (3) not be deleted from the original legislation. If this subsection is deleted, qualifying expenditure in respect of what was once termed a Georgian house and is now only a house would require that the work be carried out in the living quarters of that house. The Minister of State said that the primary focus of this initiative, which has been three years in the making, is to encourage families to come back to live in the city centres. The removal of the obligation on somebody who is availing of this type of tax relief, which is very generous over a ten-year period, to incur expenditure on the living quarters of a premises which facilitates them to live in it means that work does not comply with the stated intention of the living city initiative. Why is subsection (3) being deleted if we are genuinely about not only having these premises refurbished and back in commercial use and so on but having people living in the upper stories of these premises?