Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The tax's purpose is to broaden the tax base so that the Government can avoid putting additional taxes on income and people at work. In terms of fairness and consistency, I am sure that the Deputy will agree that it would not be fair to require some citizens to pay while exempting others.

The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government assures me that it has gone through the estates one by one and taken decisions on their standards. I presume that the Deputy will accept that, if phase 4 of an estate is not commenced and probably will not be in my lifetime, whatever about his, it is wrong to categorise it as an unfinished estate. The established criteria, which are available for viewing on the website and set out the essentials that must be complied with, are transparent. As the Deputy stated, they reduce the number of unfinished developments that will be exempted to 421.

The application of the tax across the board must be efficiently collected. For this reason, the Government, having regard to the efficacy of previous collection systems, has allocated that responsibility to Revenue, which will enforce the law.

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