Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have one point. Not all vacant houses are on farmland in rural Ireland. We will find a lot of cases where there was a house on an acre of land and, when the older generation died out, the house was left empty. Some of those houses might be done up and sold if there was a tax incentive for the next generation. With regard to capital gains in a farm family situation, I fully accept that very few of them would be sold, but if anyone travels a parish in rural Ireland, they will see there are a good few of those empty houses that are not attached to a farm.