Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

On this specific point, when the new vehicles were brought in my understanding was that the whole point of them was to enable this to be done. The intention was to attract foreign or domestic investment capital into property and to provide for no tax to be charged in this regard for several years. We wanted the money. My understanding was that the whole point of these vehicles, rightly or wrongly, was to recycle the profits into further investments, as Deputy Michael McGrath has explained. That is actually what they have tried to do. This has led to a property bubble. My understanding is that this was the exact objective.