Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to raise this matter. It is unfortunate that no Minister from the Department of Finance has come to the House to respond. While I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy McGinley, given that the issue affects virtually everybody in the country, it is a pity that nobody from the Department of Finance was prepared to attend.

There is a very real risk that many thousands of homeowners face being considerably overcharged for the new property tax. The local property tax is anti-urban, anti-jobs and above all takes no account of people's ability to pay. Contrary to the promises we were given, it is not a site-valuation tax. For all those reasons it is an unfair tax. However, the administration of the tax makes that unfairness even worse. The Revenue Commissioners used a complex statistical model to arrive at its estimate for each property throughout the State. However, obvious determinants of property price, such as size, number of bedrooms, condition, extension or garden size, were either imputed from area averages or did not form part of the model used.

People are generally not aware of this fact. It means that smaller homes can end up in a valuation band that is higher than the true value of that home. By its own admission, the Revenue estimate is up to €50,000 out in a large number of cases and up to €100,000 or more out in approximately 10% of cases. The guidance and background documentation provided makes this clear. The valuation band prediction is accurate in less than 50% of cases by Revenue's own admission, which is unacceptable in terms of providing guidance to the public on the matter. People are not aware that the guidance being presented to them by Revenue is so inaccurate in a majority of cases. Instead Revenue has used the model to provide highly crude valuation guidance based on area averages within each electoral division. However, because it is based on averages, in many cases this guidance is utterly meaningless.

I recently crosschecked last year's house sale prices in one electoral division in my constituency with the guidance provided by Revenue. Of the ten properties sold last year, seven did not correspond to the area valuation identified by Revenue. What practical use is this to people in that area? There is a real risk that many people will be overcharged because they are unaware of how unreliable Revenue's approach has been and they do not want to run the risk of second-guessing Revenue. To add insult to injury the reply I received this week to a parliamentary question confirmed that if a person pays more than is due and that becomes obvious later there is no mechanism for that person to get a refund. People are generally not aware of this either. What responsibility is the Minister taking for this? Does he accept that the system operating at the moment is very inaccurate and that steps need to be taken to provide much clearer guidance to the public to avoid people being overcharged?

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