Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister stated that the tax is based on a self-assessment.

If I own a house in a housing estate where some of the houses have been proven to have pyrite and I put it on the market, even though I might owe €300,000 on it, the highest offer I will get is €100,000 because potential buyers would be suspicious it might have pyrite. Nobody would buy a house at the moment in a housing estate where there is pyrite. Is it okay for me to put the value of my house at the highest offer I get, namely, €100,000 rather than the estimated value of €300,000?

Could the Minister explain why when the household charge was being calculated, more than 40,000 houses were exempt from it because the houses were in unfinished estates yet the figure has now been reduced to approximately 5,000? There has not been a dramatic amount of work done in unfinished estates in the intervening period. How did the number reduce so quickly?

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