Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 20, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following:

“Tax credit claim

17. A tax credit can be claimed where a person works remotely.”.

I tabled this amendment, the subject of which is topical today as it is the day we signed the contract for the national broadband plan, to try to incentivise and encourage people to work remotely. There are major benefits for the economy and society if we can encourage people to work remotely. One of the key things we need to do in the current housing crisis is to try to maximise the use of the existing housing stock, the 1.7 million houses across the country. Some of those houses are not in areas of high demand. Many of them are in parts of rural Ireland, including my constituency. On the other hand, the cost to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government of a serviced site is €30,714. If we can get someone to move out of an urban area where there is high demand for housing into a rural vacant house, that in itself would save the Exchequer €30,714 in one less serviced site needing to be provided.

If we can encourage a person in rural Ireland to reduce his or her weekly car travel by 300 km per week, that would reduce carbon emissions by 1.7 tonnes per annum. If we were to use the Government's public service spending code and the average cost of carbon over the next ten years, that would be a net saving to the Exchequer of €122. We need to take pressure off Dublin and relocate jobs into rural communities, taking pressure off housing, roads, schools and much of our infrastructure and at the same time we would fill a skills shortage in many parts of rural Ireland. This amendment, which encourages people to work remotely, provides for a win-win situation in taking pressure off the congested infrastructure particularly in Dublin but also in other cities.

When we discussed this topic on Committee Stage, the Minister made the point that tax expenditure guidelines issued by his Department stipulate that the key rationale for Government intervention by way of tax expenditure should be the existence of market failure and that a tax based incentive should be more efficient than a direct expenditure measure. We have market failure in terms of the housing situation. All of us in this House accept that. We need to come up with some innovative solutions that take pressure off the housing stock, particularly in our urban areas, and encourage people to relocate to rural communities. As a result of the Eir 300,000 build-out of broadband, the reality is that there are quite a number of rural villages around Ireland that have access to 1,000 Mbps high-speed broadband that have vacant houses and are struggling to maintain student numbers in local primary schools.

This is a win-win situation for everyone. As the Minister indicated on Committee Stage, we should be looking at incentives that are more efficient that direct expenditure measures. The point I have made is that the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government spends an average of €30,714 on a serviced site while there are vacant homes in communities in many parts of rural Ireland that have been denuded of their populations. Surely it makes sense to put in place an incentive to encourage people to go back to those rural communities. I accept that someone who was born and bred in Dublin is not going to relocate to rural Ireland, but I will give the Minister a practical example. County Roscommon has the highest level of participation in third level education in the whole of Ireland. Despite this, the number of graduates employed there is the lowest of any county. The objective is to put in place a clear incentive to encourage people to relocate to rural communities in order to work remotely, servicing the businesses in Dublin and the other cities. This is a win-win situation for everyone.

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