Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is €376 million as a result of the 4% increase. This is based on the outturn for commercial property sales last year. Looking at a linear increase, it would double at 4% and so forth. We raised our concerns on the night of the budget and since then. It is interesting to listen to CBRE property consultants. They have insight into the current position of commercial property. They say the figures for the past three years have been inflated by the sale of assets by NAMA and the banks, which has generated an unusually large number of high value transactions. Obviously, one can take it that such transactions will not continue into the future. In addition, most property commentators are of the view that total investment spend volumes in the Irish commercial property market will be lower in 2017 than they were last year. Overall investments in the Irish commercial property market exceeded €1.3 billion in the first nine months of this year according to Jones Lang LaSalle Limited, JLL. JLL is of the view that volumes for 2017 will likely reach between €2 billion and €2.5 billion. If we accept the higher estimate of €2.5 billion, which would mean a significant increase in the last few months of this year, that is significantly lower than the €4.5 billion outturn in 2016. That is an expected €2.5 billion in commercial property transactions in 2017 against €4.5 billion last year.

It is risky to use what could be seen as dodgy figures to underpin the budgetary strategy. I raised this issue two days ago when we were discussing cuts in income taxes, the sustainability of the tax base and so forth. There is close to €400 million coming from this, but we must investigate whether the figures are robust. There are serious questions in this regard on a number of measures. First, the experts expect the outturn for this year to be a little over half of the outturn for last year. Also, the previous outturns were inflated because of sales by banks and NAMA. A major gap, therefore, could emerge in the budget very quickly.