Ms Deirdre Scully:

One aspect of the land-value sharing is that when people come from planning they cannot avoid the situation. There is a period where it can be paid when the land is zoned or it can be paid at a later stage in planning. For those who seek to avoid it, that is not possible because it is built into the value of the land in the long term. If they dispose of the land they will have a decision to either pay the levy off or to sell the land at a slightly lower price, taking into account that the money is still owed to the local authority. The legislation has been designed to make it much more difficult for councils to not be able to collect it because once the land comes forward for planning they have to do that. They will be locked into a payment system. I am not a financial expert and I would not try to give advice on that but the way it has been drafted includes a number of steps to ensure that once the land is activated, the payments will be collected.