Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On amendment No. 4, the key issue, which relates to amendment No. 3, is that we have a valuable real-time register of residential property transactions. It is a valuable tool for everybody, including purchasers, analysts, policymakers and, I am sure, the Government. The problem is that we do not have something similar for land transactions. The market in land is probably one of the most opaque. It is very difficult to know what land has been sold at what price. Given land is such a central feature of residential development costs, and it can be one of the underlying speculative elements of rising costs of development, which then result in rising costs for house prices and rents, we need a register of land sales.

In the context of the Bill, the call for a register of this type could only happen if the Property Services Regulatory Authority, PSRA, was transferred over to Tailte Éireann. I will speak to this aspect separately, in keeping with the guidance of the Chair. I am not going to press this amendment. I am, however, interested in hearing the thinking of the Minister of State and the Department regarding the idea of having such a register and whether it would be something the Government will at least actively consider because it would be such a valuable tool for us all to have. If we can do this for residential property prices, then I fail to see why we cannot do this for land transactions.