Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am alive to the fact that the price changes we have seen in the property market could have a number of different causes. To deal with a commitment that I made last year, in the tax strategy group, TSG, papers of this year we dealt with some of the issues that were raised. To respond to Deputy Pearse Doherty's question, what I did in the aftermath of last year's Finance Act was ask for an appraisal to be done on the effects of the operation of these companies in the economy. That work is being done. By the end of quarter 1 of next year, the tax returns for these companies will have been filed. My Department will then be in a position to make an appraisal of the operation of the IREFs and some of the section 110 organisations to which Deputies referred. My plan is to integrate the analysis that we make of that taxation data with 18 months worth of information we will have on the property market at that stage and address this matter more substantively in the papers we will publish next summer. This year, we began work on examining trends in the property market. We need more data on that. More fundamentally, the filing of tax returns by these companies will give us the opportunity, on an aggregate level, to better examine some of the issues raised.