Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 75:

In page 81, between lines 19 and 20, to insert the following:

"66. The Minister shall, within one month of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on options for the abolition of the Local Property Tax.".

There is no point rehashing the debate we have had thus far. Amendment No. 76 provides that the Minister report on the cost of the proposed freezing of the local property tax and the likely property prices in 2019. We are dealing with a method of taxation of families which is unstable. To stabilise it in the election cycle the Government had to freeze it. I would like to know the likely cost of the property tax freeze and likely property prices in 2019.

Amendment No. 78 deals with an issue of significant importance to a large section of our population. The amendment provides:

The Minister shall, within one month of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on options on extending the exemptions from the Local Property Tax to residents in buildings unsafe because of fire safety regulations or other structural issues.

The Minister will have a lot of experience of people with regard to pyrite. These are people whose homes, because they are crumbling, have almost zero value. My understanding is that if following the carrying out of a particular test a house is identified as having significant pyrite damage, the owner can seek an exemption from the local property tax on that basis, and that the exemption applies for only six years. As such, in terms of the cost of the test, the exemption is useless. There are other people similarly affected, for example, the people of Longboat Quay and Riverwalk Court, which is in Meath. These people are living in houses that are practically valueless because they do not meet necessary standards. Would it not be useful to extend the exemption to these individuals? Deputy Doherty has constituents in Donegal whose houses contain muscovite mica, and similar to those affected by the pyrite disaster, they have lost confidence in living in their houses or else the value of their properties has dissolved.