Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am going to be very brief. I want to thank all of the people for their submissions, and I want to particularly single out the IFA. It put it quite succinctly in a presentation to us when it summed it up in five key messages. It is about farmhouse revitalisation. That is really essential, and that is what we are talking about. I am conscious of not going beyond the remit of the bigger housing issue in terms of urban places. We have a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but our focus here is on agriculture and rural communities, and sustaining those rural communities. That is the focus to which I want to pay some sort of attention this evening.

The real focus, in terms of the IFA's submission, is where it talks about farmhouse revitalisation. In summary, it makes five points: housing for the farm family; support the next generation of farmers and their families; allow for farm diversification; contribute to the local economy; and promote environmental sustainability. That is it, in a nutshell. I always say to people when they make a presentation to joint Oireachtas committees to keep it simple and keep the ask simple, and one will get more out of it. I want to acknowledge that, and all the submissions which were made today.

I am conscious of two things. We had IPAV in here earlier on. We discussed a league table in its presentation, which was from the Central Statistics Office. It talked about the vacancy rates across the country. It is extraordinary to look at this map we have in front of us, and we can make this available to the witnesses. We see that at the top of the scale in terms of percentages is Leitrim, with 15.5%. Roscommon has 13.4%, and Mayo has 13.5%. Moving down the scale, Cavan has 11.8%, Sligo has around 11%, Donegal has 11.4%, and Monaghan has around 10%. One comes right down, and believe it or not, Kildare has the lowest, which is surprising. It is lower than even Dublin, at 5.3%. That identifies the issues.

There was a suggestion by IPAV. It touched on a very good issue, which I teased out with them. Everything is down to money at the end of the day, or most things are down to money. One of two things I want to touch on with the witnesses is capital gains tax. I am very familiar with rural Ireland and the agricultural community, and my family farm in Kildare and in Grangecon and Dunlavin in west Wicklow, a part of the world which many of the witnesses may be familiar with. They are quite affluent areas, so they are not good examples of the issues, because they are on the border of Dublin and are highly sought-after for a whole range of reasons. We all know the impact of capital gains tax, and there was a suggestion by the auctioneers who were before us that we could have an amnesty for two or three years. That is not going to happen. Let us not be codding ourselves. There is a case for a reduction in capital gains tax, and I would like to see even a lower rate, or an amnesty for a period. However, I believe it does not need to be a national scheme. It needs to be a targeted scheme.

We have the figures here, which tell us about the rates across the country where there are high levels of vacancies, so we could have a more measured thing. Many farming people tell me they may have a piece of property on the edges of a farm. Now I understand that family farms do not like selling anything, and many see themselves as having a legacy to pass on to generations. That is the history of farming in Ireland anyway. It is a good thing I think, and a nice thing to be able to do. It is not always practical, but it is a nice thing to do.

We could address some of the vacancies in that way, and I would be interested to hear what the witnesses think. They will all know of very significant problems around people being forced to dispose of, or having to sell, split or divide up family farms, and there are also issues around capital gains. There is an issue there, and Mr. Punch touched on it when he talked about the rental sector. Remember, when one is doing up houses to rent, there are landlord and tenancy regulations. It is very difficult to get someone out after a while. There are issues then around rental income, and how much one can offset all of that. It is not an attractive option for a lot of people, and it comes with a lot of constraint. The landlord and tenant issue is clearly a challenge, as are our rural housing guidelines. I call again on the Government to proceed and honour its commitment with regard to the rural housing guidelines. They need to be published. We need some degree of certainty.

I want to share with the witnesses two things before I ask them one question. I was in Jersey for the last few days at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, and the witnesses might ask what that is all about, but it concerns the jurisdictions of Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and the Crown dependencies, so we are talking about Guernsey, Jersey and other places. What was interesting was that at one of our discussions at the fringe committee I am on - committee D - we talked about rural housing. This is a huge problem in Scotland and Wales. We need to look at jurisdictions, and we also need to look outside the box on this issue. It was interesting that in Scotland, the housing authorities there are buying up clusters in a five-mile radius, which is, we might say, ten to 15 houses, doing them up, and putting them into a trust. I am not in the business of saying it should all be for the local authorities. It could be a public private partnership, or a synergy with a co-operative movement, where they would buy up these vernacular stone buildings, restore them, and enter into up to 30-year leases for some people on very favourable terms. This is addressing the issue which the IFA and others have touched on today about supporting rural communities.

We have a situation in parts of rural Ireland, which the witnesses well know and do not need me to tell them, where GAA clubs are closing down. Schools are empty, families are abandoned, and older members of families really want their families to come back to them. At the same time, we can now work from home two or three days a week. It is now becoming an attractive proposition to work two days a week in our places and come to Dublin. We also know that many rural farmers are farming part-time. They cannot make a living out of it, so they are farming part-time, and they are involved in agri-related enterprise and business, or are totally in town doing something else. It could be finance, selling insurance, or doing anything. Wi-Fi connectivity and all of that offers opportunities to stay partially on the farm.

The bottom line is that we know we have thousands of empty properties, and we need to embrace it. The witnesses are pushing an open door with me, and with most members of this committee. We have addressed this issue.

I draw the witnesses' attention to a report on town and, in particular, village regeneration, which was compiled and published earlier this year by the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, of which I am a member. It had 39 recommendations, and I am going to circulate this to the witnesses tomorrow. Out of that, and co-operating and working with each other, we could drive this agenda. I always say it, and I say it more so in this committee than I do at other committees, it is about driving the political agenda. We have had a lot of debate in recent weeks and a certain amount of talk about discourse within rural communities, and the need for rural communities, particularly agricultural communities in rural Ireland, to mobilise and combine their efforts and energies with regard to more political engagement. We are discussing this matter in Dublin, and we know that politics is very Dublin-centric, and we need to address that and get back out to the communities. That is something I would encourage.

I hear and understand what the witnesses are saying. There are real opportunities here to revitalise communities, address issues around sustainability, get houses renovated and lived in, and support the farming communities and the older people who live in the villages around those communities and infrastructures. I will go back to the question around capital gains. What are the witnesses' personal experiences of it, what do they think about some amnesty or a major reduction? I would only favour it in a targeted way for particular rural communities which are in crisis, and which, as we have identified through the Central Statistics Office, have these very high empty residential units.

I thank the witnesses for engaging. This is an especially interesting session on agriculture. It is important. We live in a community, an economy and we live in rural Ireland and an agricultural community. We need to support all that together. The witnesses might briefly address what they think about the issues of capital gains tax and its implications.