Mr. Patrick Davitt:

The next time I come here I will ask Deputy Michael Healy-Rae to come with me because he is a great ambassador for auctioneers. I would be delighted if he could come with me wherever we go. That would be great.

It is my understanding from looking at the document that the site tax is to replace commercial rates. That is what I understood that it was. It is not the residential property zone tax, RPZT, which we seemed to be speaking about earlier on. The residential property zone tax is supposed to replace the vacant site tax. It is there to persuade - that is how we would talk about if there was no big stick - builders to build properties. It does not take into consideration the possibility of sustainability of building those properties or anything to do with the cost of building, etc., at the moment.

As our friends in the Irish Farmers' Association say, the issue of property tax or the RPZT in farming is a different kettle of fish altogether, because farmers are farming their land. There is no way that land that is being farmed should be within the scope of this tax at all. It should not even be in it. These maps have been put into the zone and into the possibility of the RPZT by the county councils. Most people only have until 1 January 2023 to get it out of it, or not. In most cases, they have to get planning consultants to get that land out. I have heard of some cases of builders who have building land in towns, apart even from agricultural land, and those maps are incorrect. As they stand, the zoning in some of them is commercial and is not even residential.

Apart from that, it was my understanding that the site tax would replace the commercial rates on properties. If that is to be the case, I do not see how one can replace the commercial rate with the site tax. This is because the site tax is many properties that will have a commercial property even in a town. As Deputy Michael Healy-Rae alluded to, they may be farming at the moment, or they may not be farming. Maybe they are there as a hardcore site or something like that, or even be for businesses, etc. How you could decide to put a site tax on that and relate it to commercial rates is beyond. To whoever came up with the idea of the RPZT, I think it is a disastrous tax.

We, along with the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, were among the first to propose a vacant site tax in Dublin. The reason for that was that between the two bridges in the city, north and south, there are more than 170 acres, or the equivalent of a golf course, is available to build on. We came up with that tax to encourage developers, county councils, local authorities and many other Government bodies to build on those sites. It was extended throughout the country and now we have been landed in a situation where it went from 3% to 7%. Then it went from 7% back to 3%. Now it is the RPZT and it will be collected by the Revenue Commissioners. If that money cannot be collected by the Revenue Commissioners and if they do not give people a tax clearance certificate, that will put people out of business, even though they possibly cannot build on their land. Valuers like us-----