Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister says that the amount of property held by REITs around the world tends to be small. However, given that such a bank of property is going to flood our market from NAMA and the banks in the next few years, that will probably not remain so here. The rationale behind REITs is to allow people to invest in property without having to manage it themselves. It is a stockmarket version of absentee landlordism. The investors do not have to pay a lot of tax but are buying up large sections of property here.

Some of my property has been sold to foreign investors for less than half of what it could be built for today. The Government says there has been a vote of confidence in Ireland Inc., but does the Minister not think it has been completely confined to property and bonds, rather than to real business? Perhaps we are selling ourselves short. I am not sure that we need to subsidise property tax breaks to such a degree in order to get them to invest here.

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