Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We fundamentally disagree. I do not think people's family homes can be considered wealth in the same way as people who have two, three or four houses - besides their family home - and rent those out to make money. For me, those rented houses are wealth-generating assets. People putting a roof over their head is surely just doing a basic thing needed to exist in society. I do not see that as wealth, but as something that society should be able to provide for people. Our society does not provide that, but people do manage to get to the point of at least having a roof over their heads through immense struggle, hardship and hard work. They are then, however, going to be charged for having that home even when it is not a wealth-producing asset.

In any event, the value of a home is not dictated by the owner. There is a relationship between the bricks and mortar required to build a house in Roscommon and the similar materials required in Ballybrack, but the value of the resulting houses will be completely different. That has nothing to do with the intrinsic quality of the buildings, but with the fact that the market, which is completely out of the control of the homeowner, has driven up the price to a certain level in one area compared with another. Those two properties, however, will be taxed on that differential. That is fundamentally unjust. We excluded the family home in our proposed wealth tax, even for the 85,000 richest people in the country who are worth €3.5 million. We think a wealth tax should be imposed on those people, but we removed the family home from consideration because we think it is different from a wealth-producing asset. That is a sustainable and reasonable position.

Turning to local authorities, would the Minister give them the power to tax the profits of property developers and land speculators and allow them to generate extra revenue that way? That might give the local authorities a few options.

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