Mr. Brian Moran:

I will address Deputy Gould’s question on whether this is a tax and whether it will reduce land value. That all comes back to implementation. Collectively, we all believe that it makes sense that when something is sold, some of that value is captured and goes back into the infrastructure. The problem in this regard is the retrospective element. This is coming in too fast to the extent that many projects and people who banked, brought investors in and got pension funds will, if this comes in the way it is coming right now, be caught by it and all of a sudden have to try to push that cost on retrospectively. If it was brought in for new zoning, that is fine. We buy the land and, therefore, if we are buying less expensively, that cost then goes into the project and nothing changes. However, it will be an issue if it is brought in overnight. It will cause a cliff effect whereby the land market will stop functioning.

If it were done over time, in increments of 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% over a number of years, that would allow the land market, that is, both the owners of land and developers, to adjust and that would allow it to be absorbed in a way that would not cause a lot of friction. In other countries where this has been brought in, for years afterwards there have been legal disputes and valuation disputes. It goes on and on and ties up, in particular, the local authority valuers in years of disputes rather than allowing them to get on with delivery. A phased introduction, without taxing people who have made, in good faith, investments in recent years and who would be stuck with the need to try to capture that money back, would be preferable.

It is about thinking this through and thinking about how the market works, given the behaviour of both landowners and developers such as us who have to buy that land to move it forward. I can think of cases where we might have been in discussion with a landowner about a deal, but those deals have collapsed and the discussions have stopped. The landowners are sitting on the land and we do not know how much we can pay for it because we are not sure where it will end up until there is a finality in the process.