Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To respond to the Minister, policy should be scrutinised and I have no problem in him scrutinising my policies. I welcome the fact when we get down to the detail of it and have to put details on the record. Deputy Durkan thinks we are misguided and all of the rest of it, and I like him too, on a personal level. There is no harm in this but his party members are supporting a party that has repeatedly brought forward a policy again that has priced out people in their constituencies. That is the reality of it. When you keep on doing the same thing over and over, you need to think this is wrong and is not working.

I will give examples here. The Minister talked about funds being taxed when the dividend is paid. He is correct in that. After an IREF, has accumulated all of that tax-free rental income, has sold off the assets, having been exempt from capital gains tax, CGT, which no other company is, and these funds cash out, and it is only international investments that are in IREFs, they pay about 15% because of the double taxation treaty. The point I am making is that any Irish company would have to pay real-time tax on the rental profits, CGT on any disposals, and the tax on any dividends that were paid out either that year or when they cash out. The reason this is really important is, because of the tax structure of these funds, they are pushing up property prices.

Baggot Street, for example, is not housing; it is commercial property. That is €85 million tax-free. That could be well spent in my constituency or in any one of the other Members’ constituencies. This is wrong for taxation.

The former Minister, Michael Noonan, made an argument that he wanted to see house prices rise. He made no bones about it and he argued in 2014 for house prices to rise in 2014. That was about bringing these funds in and pushing house prices up. It is a failed strategy and our people are suffering as a consequence of it. That is why this policy needs to end and why the same taxation that is applied to every other company, landlord and individual who has rental income or who disposes of an asset should apply to these multibillion euro investment firms which do not fund the construction of any house or apartment. They purchase them after they have been built, away from the hands of people who want to have their own homes. Instead, we have this situation, as Deputy Lahart has said, of private rental instead of home ownership.

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