John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a lot of sympathy with what the Deputy said about rebalancing this. It is important for the Minister to outline the economic context that initiated this process. Entities such as the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, and indigenous pension funds such as An Post that invested in some these organisations. I am of the view that so much momentum has now been gained, particularly in the apartment construction sphere and in the city and county of Dublin, I would like to hear the Minister's views on what the Government has been doing to slowly begin to wind these down. The consequences are quite profound.

I have been a public representative for 22 years and I have seen for the first time a development of 200 units in my constituency - all houses as opposed to apartments - where, unlike in the traditional model where a builder would build ten houses, sell those ten, the sale of which would finance the next ten, which they would sell to finance the next ten, the developers were able to keep the wooden hoarding around the perimeter of the site until every single house was completed. Not one house was sold until the entire development was completed. No small builder could afford to do that. There was a time when that was needed and I get that, because it represented the only building activity an in a country that was recovering from an appalling crash. However, market influences in the form of these developers have started to overwhelm the entire construction piece, especially in the residential space.

The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has introduced measures to deal with it, but it is important for the debate here that the Minister set the context in which these measures have to be wound down and are being wound down, and the context in which they were introduced. It is too easy to say in 2021, and people will not have the memory going back ten years, that the Minister is doing this as though the measures were only introduced in the last week or two weeks. The measures were introduced at a particular time to generate and stimulate activity. Do I like them? No. Do I favour them? No. Do I want to see the end of them? Absolutely. I have seen too many in my constituency. The Deputy has not suffered the consequences of strategic housing developments, SHDs, in Donegal. He has in that some of his constituents are the parents of children who are trying to live, rent and buy in Dublin, and they will see the consequences of SHDs and the real estate investment trusts, REITs, where there is an overwhelming supply of build to rent. Again, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, is bringing in measures to deal with that.

It is important, however, to explain the context that it was at a time when there was zero economic activity and zero construction activity. The State did look around to see who would start building here. Will we look back and be proud of everything that happened in that regard? I do not think we will, but they created jobs and activity at a time when, as a result of the crash, there was no activity and there was no money in the country to generate activity. The people who have been left out of this are the small builders, and they need to be facilitated.

One of the things that has come across, even in a county like Dublin, which has four local authorities, each of which has different situations and different contexts, is that while we have these SHDs in my own constituency, the latest for which permission has been granted being a 13-storey residential apartment complex in Citywest, we are still waiting to get anything like that kind of height and density in the city. The city can take these developments because it has the transport infrastructure. People theoretically could live close to where they work, whereas in parts of my constituency, these developments are being shoehorned in on top of settled residential areas where the amenities and the transport piece simply cannot cope.

I would like to see the end of these tax provisions. It is simply wrong now that these would continue in the context we are in where building activity has come back to and is approaching pre-crash levels. One group should not be advantaged over another. However, I believe we are travelling in that direction. That is the piece I would like to hear the Minister outline, but also a little on the context in which these arose. They did not arise, to use the Latin term, ex nihilo, out of nothing. There was a need for them. That need has passed and is passing quickly. They ought to be replaced. The Minister’s comments on this would be welcome.

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