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

I move amendment No. 71:

In page 153, line 39, after “Act).” to insert the following:

“653AQ.Within 3 months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil into the implementation of the Vacant Homes Tax.”.

My other amendments were ruled out of order, presumably because they involved a charge on the Exchequer. This amendment is looking for a report on the implementation of the vacant homes tax. It allows me to ask certain questions about how this will operate and whether it will be adequate. It might bring vacant homes back into use, which is what the purpose of it obviously is and should be. To get a portion of the 160,000 houses identified in the census back into use could be useful to help to house people and deal with the dire housing crisis we are facing.

On the last conversation and Deputy Matthews’s questions, I never accused the Minister of being naïve. I mentioned a multi-unit apartment complex across the road from my office where at least 15 but up to 17 units have been sitting empty now for about two and a half years. The vulture fund that bought it is busy trying to drive the tenants out and has succeeded in driving most of them out, which is why those properties are empty. One thing that is going on there is that throughout all that period, there were very slow refurbishment works going on. These refurbishment works have been going on for as long as those places have been empty - since they drove the tenants out with threats of evictions and so on that just eventually led the tenants to give up and go. Some of the tenants stayed and resisted. Hopefully, their resistance will bear fruit in that the long campaign has meant the local authority and an approved housing body are now trying to purchase the block. I hope that goes through and we end this awful situation and the scandal of those empty apartments. Meanwhile, those places have been vacant. Everybody who is left living in that block knows that they have been perfectly well refurbished for quite some time. However, they maintain to pretend that there was work still being done to them.

To be honest, I do not know whether they are being charged anything or whether they are identified as vacant properties or would be. However, the point is there is an exemption in the vacant homes tax if substantial works are being done, is there not? Therefore, I would be worried that that exemption can be exploited and one would get precisely that. There is this case, but I can see this situation being repeated in Tathony House, where there is a massive eviction threat, and in other places where they want to get the tenants out. In this case, I think they just wanted to make them empty long enough that then the rent pressure zone rules that limited rent increases would expire and no longer apply and they could then jack up the rent or just increase the value of the property by getting vacant possession, but kind of justifying all that on the grounds that they are doing substantial refurbishments to the place. I would like the Minister to address that concern. I could see that being done and in the case I am referring to it looks as if something like that was going on. It would not take long for the unscrupulous to figure out whether there are things they could do to benefit from exemptions or loopholes in the tax and manage to evade it.

In addition, three times the property tax is just not enough to put any serious pressure on those sorts of people who do that kind of thing. Does the Minister know what I mean? I refer to the kind of people who are happy to sit on a property and watch its value appreciate and are ruthless enough to throw people out and intimidate and bully them out of a place because they want to maximise the value of their investment. In fact, I went with the poor tenants who were being threatened with eviction to the RTB. I remember so well the high-powered barrister representing that particular vulture fund who said that this is not pleasant - it is ugly - but their client has to maximise the value of their investment.

It was as cold and as ruthless as that. They knew what they were doing was not nice but they had to maximise the value of their client's investment. There are people like that out there. People as calculating, profit-hungry and ruthless as that will do the calculations. They will work out that, even if they have to pay three times the property tax, they would make a hell of a lot more by letting a place sit empty and therefore maximise the value. We need a much more punitive vacant homes tax than the Minister is suggesting to make it really work, so it becomes painful for people to sit on empty property in that way. We would like to see the tax kick in if a place is empty for six months or more. The Minister is suggesting a lot longer. If I understand him correctly, somewhere could potentially be empty for a year before the tax would kick in. I ask the Minister to clarify that. That is my understanding.