Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Senator's first point on the homeless figures that were published this morning is very relevant. The fact that land is too dear in Ireland leads to expensive housing. Expensive housing leads to evictions as people cannot make their repayments because the initial price was beyond their means. When they are evicted, they become homeless. Rents are too high because property prices are too high. We have not managed the rental sector well. As Professor Drudy said, the introduction of the rent pressure zones and the 4% limit was good but the problem is that we started from a very high base. While we are only allowing a 4% increase, we did not start out at a common sense or affordable level. We started at a point when things had already gone mad. We are only allowing landlords to increase rents by 4% per year above mad levels. The bar was too high to start out with.

The main reason that residential property is too dear is land-banking.

That is the truth. I have made the point on several occasions that 30 km outside the centre of any city on mainland Europe, one will get a three-bedroom house for €160,000, and if one goes 30 km outside Dublin, one will pay double that sum for a three-bedroom house. That is madness. It is built into the land price. Ireland is one of the few countries that does not tax the gain on the land that one is sitting on and its price is going up. It is a free meal for them. As long as we allow that, we will continue to have expensive land. It also will go up and down, which is madness as well. The State should be avoiding situations where things go up and down because it leads to insecurity and to problems. In the case of housing, it leads to homelessness.

On the second point about the vacant site levy, local authorities have made it plain that they have struggled with it. Some of them have no sites on their vacant site levy list for January 2019. Some of them state that they could not handle it because there were too many loopholes in it. Our Bill addresses much of that. We are tightening it up so that it is clearer to the local authority what is and is not a vacant site. It was so clouded and vague that there were more holes in it than in a sieve and it was too easy for site owners. I pointed out two simple examples where it was so easy to argue one's way out of it by stating that a site was not really vacant and one was using it for this or that.

With regard to whether the local authorities have the resources to collect the levy, if they have not, given that it would bring in a great deal of money, how about resourcing the local authorities to be able to do it? If they do not have enough staff to do it, let us give them to the local authorities. It would be a good investment for the Government because it would get buckets of money back if it could get this levy up and running, especially at a proper rate, such as 25%. There is a considerable amount of money to be taken in by the State annually if it taxed land-banking, and the money could be ring-fenced for social housing.