Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I hear what the Minister is saying but I am thinking of when the scheme came in. We are in a different place and I will not get into looking back. I did not like it in the first place but there was a rationale around trying to get activity into the property market and the whole idea was that people held for four to seven years. As time went on, the worst time to dispose of it was at that seven years. That is the problem in which we find ourselves now. We need to look at options to see how we deal with this incentive. I would like to know how many properties were bought during those windows that could still avail of the CGT exemption. I presume some of those data are not available because until you make the claim you will not know.

We do know, and I have looked at data on the number of acquisitions that happened during that period. They were quite significant. I do not have the figures to hand but I looked at them about a year ago. There are a large group of properties that fall within this scope. I am concerned that as time goes on, people may see the benefit they have of the full CGT exemption being reduced and therefore their tax liability increasing. Given it is coalescing with high asset prices and a potential reduction in property prices if we have a continuation of high interest rates, this is just an absolute disaster if it is an incentive for people to sell. I urge the Minister to look at options and publish some type of paper. That is something I may bring forward on Report Stage. The Department should look at options in respect of this, not necessarily to say we need to go ahead with the options but it should be teased out and considered given the significance it has for public policy in the State.

If it is okay, I want to return to the actual amendment itself. It deals with retrospection. I am not opposed to this but I want to make the legal point that we are changing the law retrospectively, whether we like it or not. We have decided this change applies to a period five years ago. It is a retrospective change. The law refers to acquisitions and we are changing that to purchases, which means people who did not purchase but acquired have a different expectation. If they sat down with their tax adviser and looked at the legislation, they would understand they were in scope here and would benefit from the CGT exemption. We are going back in time and saying "No". We are telling them that although they benefit from the exemption, that is why we are now changing the law to change it to purchasing. We are doing that because it is what we always intended but intentions are not what set the law. They are not what is decided in our courts. It is what we pass as legislators and what is signed into law by the President. I say that in the context of the wider debate we have just had.

There is a point in this section where we are going back in time and changing the law, not for any great purpose bar the fact that people might have got a house from their parents or something like that, possibly having paid a small amount of money on it, and are able to get the CGT exemption, which is massive. That was not the intention. It was about encouraging people to buy property at a time when there was very little activity. I understand that. However, from a legal point of view we are going back in time. On individuals who have sold their property since 2008 and who acquired that property, what happens to them? The property has been sold. They have availed of the full CGT exemption but now, as a result of this change in the law, in cases where they did not purchase the property but it was gifted to them and so on, what happens in terms of clawback?