Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the latter point. That is the point that I was going to bring up here. It is an issue that I raised with the Minister's officials during the briefing, namely, that under the current drafting, it does not allow for the on-sale of precast concrete products, and the tax will fall on them. I gave the example of garden kerbs. They will be exempt from the levy if they are manufactured in a controlled environment, but they have to go to the final destination. They have to go to a building site, and that is not what happens with garden kerbs. Customers buy them in building providers, therefore it falls outside of the scope of the legislation and the product will be subject to the levy. The same will happen with windowsills and lintels for houses and so on. I presume the amendment that the Minister is proposing to bring forward deals with the issue we discussed in the briefing session we had beforehand.

I go back to the point that it is a tax on building homes.

That is what it is at the end of the day. I do not think anybody thinks this is a good idea at this point. If the sole purpose of this tax is to offset the cost of the defective blocks scheme, that is not a good enough reason to put a tax on building homes at this point in time, particularly when we are not in a situation where we have deficits and need to raise this tax because otherwise the resources will not be available to us to finance these schemes. Thankfully, we are not in that position so, therefore, the rationale for bringing forward this tax makes no sense. There are inflationary pressures in the construction industry, some of which are outside of our control such as the pressure on supply chains following the pandemic and pushed up prices and general inflation problems. However, we can control this. We can say we will do no more harm to house prices by not introducing a tax, at least at this time, on concrete products. The tax is in effect at this point in time so by taking away this tax, the Minister should be reducing the cost of building a typical house, probably by €1,500. This does not resolve the issue in terms of house prices but at least it does not make it any worse and it improve things slightly in terms of affordability for individuals. I genuinely do not understand the rationale behind this.

I could consider that a Government announcement that it is bringing forward a scheme of €2.5 billion to €3 billion with an offset measure would seem very prudent and fiscally responsible, and would be a clear signal to the markets and lenders, but I do not think we need this at this point in time. The Minister has just deferred the zoned land tax, and this proposal should be deferred at the very least. It should not be amended just to tidy up the problems that existed last year. At the very least, it should be deferred. I am passionate about this. I find it very difficult to understand why the Government would do this because there is no real rationale for it. It pushes up house prices so why would the Government decide to do it? Could the Minister explain this to me? I am sure he accepts that this pushes up house prices. It does not make sense. At the very least, it should be deferred. It would be one of the first thing I would do if I ever had the opportunity to sit where the Minister sits and I would not wait for a finance Bill to do it either. I would bring forward an immediate amendment to legislation to get rid of this levy. It is bonkers in the middle of a housing crisis with house prices running away from us.