Mr. Frank McDonald:

I have never heard a rational explanation for why the property-based tax incentives continued for so long and I would like to hear former Ministers for Finance, of whom there were several during the period, justify, in their own terms, why these incentives continued for so long. My personal belief, as I said in my statement, is that there was such a large constituency of people who benefited from the tax incentives that, in itself, led to a lot of lobbying. Whenever there was a danger that the incentives would be phased out, there was heavy pressure brought to bear on the Government by the construction industry to continue the incentives for as long as possible and to roll them over. There were multimillionaires in this country who were property investors and who ended up paying hardly any tax at all because they were availing of so many incentives, including section 23, multi-storey car parks, hotels, student housing and so on. I think they had the ear of Government. That is my impression. The construction industry realised the boomtime could only be sustained if the tax incentives were sustained because otherwise, how could people have thought it was good value to buy a two bedroom flat for €450,000 if it was not for the fact that they were able to write all of that off against their tax liability? That is what made the difference in terms of the viability of a particular investment.