Mr. Niall Cody:

The Deputy is correct that the undertaking was a huge challenge. We had to prepare a register. The register was prepared from a number of data sources. One of the particular challenges was that of non-unique addresses, namely, addresses in country areas where there are different variations of address such that an address and a name could be slightly different. We will have picked up data from different sources. Some of the houses are not houses. At the time the report was being compiled there were 68,000 no-owner properties on the register. The current figure is 47,000, which is a reduction of 21,000. Of that 21,000 more than 60% were duplicate properties - there was not a property.

It is a really difficult part of the register to work on because each case must be looked at to see if the property is a real property, and then we must see if there is an ownership.

The census figure is the figure we have always used as our target for what the property register is. The last census figures had a figure of 1.99 million properties. Of the 1.9 million properties, approximately 236,000 were uninhabited, vacant and in various stages of vacancy. One of the key issues is that the property tax is payable on habitable properties. I have seen some of the cases, and some of the committee members have seen some of the cases when representations were made. If somebody dies in a property, it is habitable when they were living in it, but it very quickly falls into a state of disrepair. Some of the cases become uninhabitable and we knock them off the register. The figure of 47,000 sounds like a large figure, but it is just over 2% of the property register. I am fairly satisfied that there are not 47,000 liable properties. There are some. Some of them are building stock that were unfinished. As houses are finished and sell, we pick them up. As people buy the house, do it up and it becomes habitable we pick it up through our stamp duty.

However, if the committee had asked us in 2013 whether we would get to 1.95 million properties by 2015, we would have said we did not think so. My predecessor was before the committee talking about the property tax, and we are really surprised that we have got it so accurate. The problem with everything to do with property tax is that 1% is approximately 20,000 and when we talk about telephone calls and contacts afterwards, 3% is just massive numbers. It is so out of the scale of something such as corporation tax, where we have less than 200,000 cases, or VAT, where we have a register of approximately 250,000. This is massive. The Collector General has a team in Ennis and Limerick working through the register as we come across contacts. In fact, in the period from the start of March 2013, when we started issuing our letters, we have had 600,000 contacts that are related to register issues. Of the 600,000, half are about owners' names being added to the register.

One of the key bases of our register was the household charge and the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, data. With regard to the LGMA data, I know people say it was not a success until the Revenue Commissioners took over, but we see it as a very credible start. We would be a great deal further behind if the LGMA had not been there first. One of the features, and this is in the report, is that the LGMA data registered the person who paid, not the owner of the property. In many cases one had adult children paying on behalf of parents. When we were having our various meetings about it we used to talk about particular parts of the country. As is known, I am from Kilkenny so we used to talk about Tipperary people. If one takes a name that is quite common in Tipperary such as Ryan, in any parish in rural Tipperary there are multiple numbers of Ryans. They will have similar names such as Patrick, Paddy and P.J. The names may be the same but they may actually be three people with three houses. If we are back before the committee next year and there is an item about the LPT register, I am quite satisfied the 47,000 will be down considerably, but I believe it will take us until properties are bought and sold and there is a reasonable amount of churn back in the market before we will get to the end of it fully.

One of the other features of the Central Statistics Office, CSO, register is that bedsits are captured by the CSO. They were liable to the household charge but they are not liable to property tax. If there is a house comprised of bedsits, and I know there are all sorts of rules about bedsits now, that is one property for LPT although it could be five addresses for the LGMA and for the CSO. We will continue to work on it.