Mr. Frank McDonald:

I am not sure they were. I would have to be really convinced about that. I do not believe they were. I am thinking, for example, of the seaside resorts tax incentive scheme. What happened was that vast townlands became designated areas. The area around Courtown in County Wexford, for example, which included Riverchapel and a vast area, was designated and anything built in that area qualified for the tax incentives, in particular holiday homes.

The real problem with the scheme was that if the aim was to rejuvenate rundown seaside resorts like Enniscrone, Lahinch or Courtown then the incentives should have been restricted to things such as all-weather playing facilities, swimming pools or other such major elements that would have added value to those places. However, once housing was included as a qualifying category it then ate up the vast bulk of the tax incentives available. Something like 85% of all the investment leveraged by that tax incentive scheme consisted of houses. In effect, those houses were three quarter scale. The great trick of that tax incentive scheme was to persuade people who lived in semi-detached houses in the suburbs to spend their holidays in semi-detached houses, of a lesser scale, in one of the designated areas. I do not think it was justified to that extent. If housing had not been included as a qualifying category the scheme might have been very beneficial.