Dr. Barra Roantree:

I will comment on two aspects. The Deputy mentioned the example of a site on the side of a mountain that is not worth very much. In this regard, it is important to say that the value of such land will likely be very low. Even thinking about a site value tax that does not make any distinction between agriculture and non-agricultural land, by virtue, as the Deputy said, of there being a not particularly valuable site, it is going to be a very low amount in the first instance. Equally, we were very conscious, as the Deputy also mentioned, of the issues around agriculture. This is why there is specific mention in our recommendations that an allowance should be made for agricultural land and that it should be treated different from other land. It is worth bearing in mind, therefore, that the site itself, such as the example mentioned by the Deputy, would not attract a high rate of LPT, even before we think about any kind of relief. We also recommend that an allowance and distinction should be made for agricultural land.

We are also very cognisant of the Deputy's first point in respect of there being all these new taxes. We are saying that we need to move from a situation where we have the LPT, commercial rates, the zoned residential land tax and the uplift tax and to think about how all these measures link together. Our overarching approach was that we have the LPT and it works and, if anything, we should be trying to raise more revenue from that. Essentially, then, everything not covered by that tax should be taken within the site value tax. If it was desired, it would be possible to add in bits around the zoned residential land tax, because that fits into this context neatly. Commercial rates should be replaced by what we are talking about and, from that perspective, what we are describing would be a more coherent system of taxes on working land.

I completely hear what the Deputy is saying in respect of being worried about this being another tax that is going to come along. It is important in this regard to look at how the set of taxes we apply to land work together and interact. I say this because once we start getting into having a local property tax on residential land, commercial rates on commercial land and then something else on zoned land, we start to get potentially weird incentives popping up. On the zoned residential land tax, for instance, in the context of introducing a derogation for agricultural land, we saw over the weekend a discussion in the newspapers of a site in north Dublin that is very much in the central area. If a zoned residential land tax were to be introduced but it was stated it would not be applied to agricultural land, suddenly strong incentives would be created to ensure any bit of zoned land had some kind of agricultural activity on it. Again, this is about thinking about how these things interact and being careful around this aspect. I very much think we were conscious of putting these things together and looking at how they interact, rather than having them just being layered one on top of the other.