Mr. Patrick Davitt:

I imagine that is the first reason. I cannot share figures because I do not have figures and I do not believe there are any. What we are trying to do is to encourage these people to sell these properties. If we do not encourage them, what will happen? Dereliction will happen year after year. People are looking for housing and still there are houses registered that are vacant and they will be vacant for longer and eventually become derelict. At the moment, the vacancy figure for Dublin is about 4% or 4.5% but obviously there are a lot more houses in Dublin. We have to start some place. It would be up to a committee to look at this. We think an amnesty should be allowed for the whole country. The Government will look at it and say it will cost money but it will not cost money because the State would not get the money anyway. It is not going to cost anything.

What an amnesty would do is bring these houses back into use and bring people to the country areas we are speaking about, of which Leitrim is the worst with a vacancy rate of 18% or so. It will bring people into those areas who will join football clubs, be members of An Garda Síochána, bank managers, etc. It will bring people to live in rural Ireland and even Dublin where there are many such houses. We see these properties on the streets every day of the week. It will look like people are living in them and they are being used, instead of people passing by something that is derelict.

It will come at no cost to the Government because it will not get the money anyway until the person dies. In the meantime, however, those properties will be used. Why would the Government not want to do this? It seems like a no-brainer at a time when we have very scarce housing. To take the carbon aspect, we are using 65 tonnes of carbon to build one new house. One, two or three years down the line, Ireland will be penalised for the carbon we are using on building new houses. These houses are there and very little carbon is required to get them back into production. It could be 15 or 16 tonnes, which is one fifth of what is used in one new house. The carbon aspect, aesthetics and giving people a home are all reasons for this.

As the Senator said, we need to think outside the box. I know some people will be unhappy with this proposal but the Government could even cut capital gains from 33% down to 10%. We do not have to go the whole way. We are putting the proposal out there to see if there is anyone prepared to talk to us about it.