Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We all accept that people having to pay almost 40% of monthly income on renting a roof over their heads is unsustainable in the long term. Rents are so much higher in Ireland than in Europe and it costs so much more to buy that up to 30% of people in the future may need social housing. Deputy Donnelly said we were looking for an incentive for house building to compete with the commercial sector. We should let the private sector build commercial property but the State must play a more active role in the residential sector.

I will not get to my next question but I do not understand why the Government has not dealt with the site value tax. The tax is supposed to come into effect in two years' time but there are more holes in it than in a sieve. We should charge a serious rate on land that is not being built on. A threshold of half a hectare has been set but that is one acre and a quarter. It means that any site under one and a quarter acres in Dublin city will not attract the tax. I built 28 apartments on a fifth of an acre but the Minister has introduced a minuscule levy that only applies to sites bigger that an acre and a quarter. There has not been a genuine attempt to tackle landbanking but it is the biggest problem we have.

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