Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

I return to the section 23 reliefs for properties that are not sold. The Minister spoke of proportionality, but it is wrong if the Government is willing to allow for section 23 reliefs to be paid up until 2021. The whole country is demanding that we end these property based reliefs. I stated already that the Government is moving in the right direction, but it is fundamentally wrong to allow property based tax reliefs to continue for a period of 11 years.

If we park that point to one side now and say that I will lose the argument that we should introduce a guillotine on these the same as we are doing in terms of the 2014 measure, it may be proportionate for us to only allow the reliefs for the houses that are not sold for a five year period so that at least they would be phased out over half the period that the Minister is accepting. Why can we not introduce the ten-year period for these reliefs now? Why are we allowing six months prior to the ten-year period kicking in? I refer back to the Minister's statement today which he made to the Dáil but during which he spoke to the nation when he said that effectively all property tax reliefs will be finished by 2014. This is simply untrue given the measures contained in these resolutions which will allow property tax reliefs until 2011 and a grace period of six months before the start period kicks in.

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