Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

We do not know that. The Minister said houses that demonstrate pyritic heave beyond a certain certifiable amount would be looked at in the Finance Act. Who will certify it? Who will pay for testing and at what level? Already, thanks to the pyrite panel, Premier Insurance, which was remediating houses with pyritic heave, is now not doing so because those houses do not display a visible enough sign of pyrite. Will 1,000 houses or 12,000 houses be exempted? We do not know. Until those questions can be answered, people with pyrite cannot get any solace from the Minister. Will the Government pay for the testing and for every single house in an estate with pyrite? Those houses are valueless. Coincidentally, they were purchased in the commuter belt at the height of the boom and are in massive negative equity. We must address that issue.

By using the Revenue Commissioners, the Minister might succeed in putting his hands in people's pockets or pay packets and take the tax from them, but at what price? If people are down that amount of money from their wages, and already 50% of families are struggling with less than €100 a month of disposable income, something else has to give. This is a tipping point or a turning point.

This is much more like a European situation. People say we should be more like the French or the Italians. In Greece, for example, the property tax is connected to people's electricity bill. In Ireland, 30,000 houses are having their electricity disconnected every day.

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