Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have never argued, and nor has anyone on this side of the House, that the vacant home tax was some sort of silver bullet. A set of measures is needed - incentives and disincentives, carrot and stick - and that is exactly what we are doing. If anything is shown by the work done by the Revenue Commissioners on the vacant home tax, it is that those who argued in this House that 150,000 homes being empty on census night meant they were vacant are wrong. There are lots of reasons a home might have been vacant on census night. It might have been for sale, between tenants, under renovation or due for demolition. The person living there might have been away for a few weeks or months and decided not to rent it out. Those who claimed there were 150,000 vacant homes based on census figures got it wrong. We told them so at the time. Will they admit they were wrong?

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