Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would like to add a further point to those that have already been made. The current approach offers an incentive to evict people. These capital gains tax breaks incentivise funds to evict people and they are acting on those incentives. When they evict people, the value of the property increases. This is what the funds are doing. I am dealing with a property in my area that has been bought by one of these funds - I am not sure of the exact year, but I am almost certain it would have been in the period in question - which is evicting people in order to drive up the value of the property. To my mind, that is another outrageous consequence of these tax breaks. We are incentivising these funds to increase their capital gains before walking away tax-free.

I have another question that I would like the Minister of State to answer, although I suspect that he cannot or will not do so. Do we have figures for the tax that would be gained or forgone, depending on whether we extend this relief? I see somebody shaking their head, so I suspect the answer is "No", which is fairly shocking in and of itself.