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

This leads me on to the next question. As we know, Mr. Justice Kenny was not necessarily a great fan of development taxes and benefit contributions. One of his criticisms of the 1947 Act on which a lot of these measures are based is that ultimately they end up being passed on to the purchaser of the home. I am thinking of a situation where a landowner who is also a developer whose land was rezoned or continued to be zoned in the previous development plan has now secured planning and is intending to go on site next year or the year after. All of the costs that were knowable at that point in time had been factored in and we are now saying to them that there is an additional cost. To what extent has that cost been gamed out or modelled in because invariably development levies and benefit taxes are ultimately passed on to the purchaser? That is not necessarily an argument against them, depending on someone’s point of view, but at a time there are all sorts of constraints in terms of commencements, how well has that been analysed and what would the witnesses say if I was that landowner or developer who is already struggling with viability and the Department is now going to hit me with an extra additional charge?