Mr. Tom Phillips:

On the issue of the windfall tax, Mr. Justice Kenny in his 1973 report talked about the betterment of land and the windfall tax, and we agree with that. The key point is that 80% was too high. It is not just about zoning agricultural land as residential land; it can be a rezoning from industrial land to residential land or land for different purposes. It does not have to be agricultural and it can have a commercial zoning use. Going sideways and not even upwards in terms of different zoning attracts the windfall tax. A material contravention whereby the local authority and a quantum of the councillors might agree it is good idea to grant permission to a particular scheme that is technically non-compliant with the development plan would attract the windfall tax. It is catching development in lots of ways. For example, a few years ago local authorities realised that too much land was zoned residential and they down-zoned it, but in the next year or two when they start rezoning land, the land that was zoned residential, bought at residential prices, down-zoned to agricultural land and then rezoned to residential because of a housing shortage will attract an 80% windfall tax. Many people say it should be zero, but we say a realistic taxation rate is 33%. This has been around as an idea since 1973. That is where we are coming from on it.

On the issue of derelict sites, one would have to look at the question of who owns them, because in Dublin city the State authorities own many of the sites. Dublin City Council and the OPW, for example, have probably the largest land banks of derelict sites in the city. We made representations to the former Lord Mayor about this. The levy is in not place at the moment. It was an idea that it should be put in place. One needs to look at why the land is derelict. Is it because people are land-banking, which would fulfil the media attachment to having a definitive reason, or is it because people cannot get the funding or the land is non-viable? There are greater issues than people simply land-banking because there are plenty of people who want to develop land but either cannot get the finance or are finding that it does not stack up.