Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Airbnb is looking for a tax break also and wants the room to rent to apply to it. One can see the reasons we will not concede on that issue. The room to rent is for the home owners. It has some potential but not an awful lot.

On the question of land, there is land in public ownership and there is land owned by various State agencies and so on. I am disposed to put a fund in place of, maybe, €100 million or so to fund the opening up of land which is inaccessible. This would be for service roads and primary utilities. Obviously, not all land is ready to build on. Local authorities must open up land. The committee might develop that idea and give me advice on it as to its potential.

Deputy O'Sullivan raised the vacant sites levy. That is an issue for the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. I understand it had to defer it on legal advice. The constitutional position is very strong on property rights. The Department had to have a long lead-in time to avoid a challenge. The 3% levy was guided by that. Given the strong property rights, it had to impose the levy that was proportionate. It would be open to challenge if it had imposed a higher levy. I was not the decision-maker on that issue but the problem was in that space and that was the reason it landed there. It does not incentivise anybody at the moment but I think it will as we get nearer to the implementation date. I would hope that land which would be subject to it in the future will come back into the market and be used for the building of houses. That is the intention.

Part V is 10% for social housing and 10% for affordable housing, so the full piece is 20%. I think members know the arguments from their constituencies. If the percentage is increased too much, private purchasers will not buy the other houses, therefore, it is a question of balancing the two. It is more of a market problem and a social problem rather than a legislative problem. It has worked to a certain extent but now that housing is in short supply, it is working less well.