Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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Could we return to site value tax? We have a policy on site value tax in my party on which I worked. Economists tend to like the look of it and it is very hard to implement. Will you say a little more about her concerns with regard to such a tax. We heard in the session last week there was a general feeling that the system of commercial rates in Ireland has broken down somewhat and does not operate very well and that site value tax might be a way of dealing with that. I take the point in the statement that we would not wish to have community or soft influence to be run out of town on the basis of site value tax. When it is in operation even in a hybrid model in other countries, they make exemptions for just that sort of thing. Will you expand on its being a kind of replacement for commercial rates?