Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

During the discussion this morning on the Social Democrats' vacant homes tax motion, the Minister for Finance was quite dismissive of the figure of 160,000 vacant homes identified by the census. He seemed to think that the figure included the homes of people who were on holidays for a few weeks but this is not correct. For a vacant home to be classified as such, the census enumerator must visit it on several occasions, find that it is vacant and then must talk to the neighbours and get clarification that there is not anyone on holidays or some other reason for a short-term vacancy. Given that the Minister charged with implementing the vacant homes tax clearly does not understand the census data on vacancy, this begs the question as to whether the Cabinet understood the data when making its decision. Will the Government reconsider the derisory 0.3% tax and increase it to an effective rate?

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