Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

But, Deputy, I'm sure ... or Chair, I'm sure you're going to do this in any event. I say that you should go and, say, have an investigation or a study into, say, the housing ...the number of houses that were sold during that particular period on which there was any tax relief given at all. You must remember, and I should have referred to this earlier, the biggest change in doing the tax relief came about after the initiative I had in the 1998 Finance Bill when I restricted to a level of £25,000 - €31,000 and something subsequently - as to the amount of money that an investor could cross over from, say, his rental property area and set against his other income as well. That actually was the biggest disincentive and control of that particular time during tax reliefs. That's the ... in my first budget I did this. And it had more of an effect. So then because not every part of the country had tax ... had section 23 relief for ... you see, section 23 relief would have started in 1981 and we reintroduced it in 1984. So most of the houses built in the boom period, as you call it, didn't have section 23 relief at all. And I think if you get an independent study you will find that.