Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appeal to the Minister to reconsider the stamp duty increase. We debated the amendment on Committee Stage and withdrew it and are now putting it forward for debate in the Chamber. The shock was the surprise. There are rumours that a farming organisation was in the know about the measure on the Friday before budget day. I do not know if that is mere speculation but the Minister, Deputy Creed, did not seem to know about the measure when he made a statement on it. He was either given the wrong information or he did not understand it. It is a serious situation because many people have been caught by surprise. They might have been planning to purchase a shop, a hardware store or a site.

The former Taoiseach went to Edgeworthstown and announced in a blaze of glory that every road from Glenamaddy was going to be redone. He did not have the skills of the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, in terms of tweeting and hashtag #Leo, but he did it with blunder and bluster. All the roads were going to be rejuvenated. There was going to be money for everything and every rural town and village was going to be enhanced and window boxes would be put in with shamrock that could be picked from them to win the parade that year. However, nothing has happened because the money rural Ireland got from the scheme the former Taoiseach announced would not buy a stamp for the application of each business in the towns and villages I represent where there are derelict and closed-up houses. We need to open the closed-up houses and shops and open businesses. We need people to buy them.

As I said, the figure of €300,000 referenced in the amendment is pretty high if one wants to buy property in the countryside but in Dublin it would not be enough to use as hello money to go in to meet the auctioneers and the lads or get a business to the Central Bank with the Government or the bankers. However, rural Ireland needs to be rejuvenated. We will do several things. We are going to go into derelict sites in every village and town in the country. It would make sense to go with the measure I sought previously regarding the VAT rate in regard to hardware shops, building materials, plasterers and builders, although not big developers. Those businesses should be given back the VAT charged on purchases. If that were done and the Government encouraged councils to reduce their charges we would have living towns and villages and halve our homeless crisis. The Government either cannot see that or has an anathema toward house building.

As I said, and as Deputy Fitzmaurice referred to, many people go to an auction with some support and so on to buy a property but might be a bit nervous and go farther than the bank had sanctioned. Many such people get a call from the bank's junior manager to tell them they have overstepped the mark and that the bank cannot loan them the sum they bid because the person had submitted projections of earnings and income that no longer add up. Such people would have gotten a dig out from their families of €20,000 or €30,000. That is not the type of dig out that has been mentioned in respect of another former Taoiseach.

That happens in families and communities. That is how we live in rural Ireland. The Deputies who live in this city might not understand it. They should come out beyond the Pale more often to see what goes on down in the real world. This measure will add €12,500 extra, which they cannot borrow. It was not accounted for in the original figure and they will have to try to make up the shortfall and get a dig out. This is a very necessary amendment to get businesses thriving. We need to encourage people to set up businesses. Deputy Michael McGrath tabled an amendment for professional people to get tax concessions. These are ordinary people whom we have educated. Many of them have gone abroad and want to come home. We need to make it attractive for them to come home and we need to support and encourage them to start families to keep the schools, sports teams and the communities alive. Otherwise, there will not be anyone to go on the bus and we will not need the blooming bus. Rural Ireland will be a wasteland. It will be all either planted or owned by the conglomerates, the vulture funds and indeed some of our own home grown vulture funds. This amendment should be considered. Deputy Fitzmaurice and I will support anything above the threshold of €300,000 that we have put into the amendment and we want to stimulate those young people to set up businesses to become the innovators and employers. They will pay taxes, rates, value added tax, VAT, and so on.

I was invited tonight to the reopening of a pub in Tipperary, The Lady Gregory, a wonderful pub. Everybody is delighted it is reopening and I wish the new owner or operator the best. We need these types of places open. We need them to keep the rates and the wages and everything else paid and to give people an outlet where they can go to celebrate. We need shops and businesses so that people are not running into big supermarkets. We do not want a branch of Tesco on every boreen in the country. It was always the small shopkeeper and the small farmer that kept things going in rural Ireland. They got us out of many recessions. They give credit as well. We do not get much credit from Mr. Tesco, or Mr. Lidl or Mr. Aldi or any of them. I am not knocking them but we do not get much credit there. We get it in the hardware shops, from the small shopkeepers. We could put post offices, which are closing in other areas, into them too.

I am asking for common sense in this regard because this measure in the Bill is sharp, with no grace period. Some people were tied up in negotiations with solicitors, some had the deal done and had spit on their wrists and shook hands but their solicitors have not fulfilled the transactions, leaving them in limbo. It is a very mean and cheap hit, especially when there is a fanfare about rejuvenating rural Ireland. That is idle talk. This amendment is an effort to rejuvenate rural Ireland. We are asking the Minister to put his shoulder to the wheel. The Minister of State and the two Deputies behind the Minister are from rural Ireland. They know what I am talking about. They know the villages and the towns in their areas. This amendment will help the homeless, get living towns up and running and enhance the environment with the Tidy Towns committees which do voluntary fundraising as well as brilliant work. They will be helped as well. It is a win-win situation.

This provision in the Bill is a mean cut. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine said he was not aware of it or did not understand it. We think a farming organisation knew about it beforehand, which is not nice. We are giving the Minister a chance to correct this tonight and rejuvenate rural Ireland, support young people to come home, support the families in rural areas and keep the schools, clubs and everything else going in those areas. Without rural Ireland alive we will only have trees growing, forestry plantation and desolation.

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