Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We do not need anybody to point out to us where there might be issues that we need to close down. The Government has already written it into the tax legislation and into this Finance Bill. It is there in black and white. Let us put on record some of the figures. In 2006, investment in commercial property from outside of Ireland equated to 2%. In 2016, it makes up 68% of the investment. All of that investment heretofore has been tax free. We have made advances and I acknowledge that there will be a dividend on withholding tax on the funds. However, there has been a huge increase in commercial property in the last year alone. Last year, there was something like a 23% increase in commercial property. The idea that the funds will not be paying capital gains tax is absolutely ridiculous. It is madness.

I have made the point time and time again that, in my view, this is a very deliberate and conscious effort by the Government to increase the value of commercial real estate. When we look at NAMA and the banks, the damage that was done in the property crash was all in commercial real estate.

That is what went into NAMA. That is where the real holes were in the banks. When one pushes up the price of commercial real estate one gets a better return for NAMA and fixes the balance sheets of some of the banks, in which we are now minority shareholders. That is the intention of Government. This has been pushed to such an extreme that Moody's and the IMF are warning about imbalances in commercial real estate property. I am blue in the face saying how much property in central Dublin has been sold out from under our feet in the past number of years. The amendment does not revisit all of that but that is its spirit. If the Government introduces a deliberate policy that says to international investors to buy up Ireland but do it tax free in terms of capital gains tax, then the least the Government should do is have the decency to tell us in the Irish Parliament how much the measure will cost the Irish people. That is what my amendment seeks to do and that is why I will press it.

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