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

A little bit like the debate that we had on intangible assets, the changes that were introduced do not deal with the window that was opened through which those speculative entities jumped. They were effectively invited in by the previous Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and the Department in the meetings which were held. I think there was an understanding that if they came here and bought into Irish property that they would pay very little tax. The logic at the time, which was fairly explicitly expressed by the then Minister, was that we needed to reflate the Irish property market. I think he argued at the time that it would professionalise the rental sector because we would have corporate entities as opposed to the small-scale landlord. We were going to bring in the big guys. It has self-evidently been a disaster. It has not done anything to make the rental sector better. It has done a hell of a lot to make it worse. The Minister said in his response that if we did not have this relief certain activities might not have happened. Yes, exactly. I am sorry those activities did happen. It is a matter of extreme regret that we brought such entities in here to gain such an important foothold in the Irish property sector.

It is obscene that those who benefited from the window that was opened in terms of section 110, even if it was closed subsequently, will continue to benefit from it and will walk away paying little or no tax on their investments. I do not understand why Revenue cannot estimate how much tax is foregone. When one looks at what has happened to the property market, the value of the investments that these persons made has gone through the roof. The Irish property market, including the rental market, is generating staggering profits. We know from the announcements of annual profits that they are going up and the companies in question are paying pitiful amounts of tax. It is a scandal. I do not see how it could be justified at any level.

There was something the Minister did not answer in his response. If we were to debate what was done in the past, why it was done and whether it was good or bad, it would be self-evident given where all of this has led that the Government made a bad and disastrous mistake. One does not have to be a tax expert or a financial whizz-kid to conclude that those who invested in property are making a fortune because it is obvious. When one considers the 60% or 70% increase in the value of those investments and similar increases in rents, one would expect the Government to think of some way, perhaps through a levy or tax, of clawing back some of the money these companies have made on the back of a dysfunctional property sector. This could be used to deal with the costs of the housing crisis that their activities helped to generate. Given the housing crisis and the direction in which the property sector has gone in recent years, would that not be a fair and reasonable course of action?