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

I thank the Deputy. As I said yesterday, the Government does not want to see investment funds buying up family homes that could be bought by individual families for their own use. That is why we changed the law in 2021 in respect of new planning permissions. This particular development got planning permission in 2019 and therefore does not fall under the law we changed in 2021. That is why this particular case has arisen. We have also put a supertax, a stamp duty of 10%, on the bulk purchase of homes. I hear what Sinn Féin is saying, which is that it wants that rate to be increased to 17%. I believe the Social Democrats have proposed 100% while other parties in the Opposition have proposed an outright ban, so even the Opposition is not united on the solution to this issue. We know when it comes to planning permissions granted after 2021 that we have already resolved the issue. What arises is developments that got planning permission before 2021. If we are going to make any changes to stamp duty, we need to examine them carefully to make sure any increase would be effective and that it would not have any unintended consequences. The fact the Opposition is divided three or four ways on this shows it is not a simple matter. While others in the Opposition might vote with Sinn Féin tonight, they do not actually agree with it, which tells a story in itself.

I would like to check out the numbers the Deputy has mentioned if she would supply me with them. Quite frankly, it is a higher number than I would have expected, but it may be the case that some of those bulk purchases were for social housing, which is quite different, or that some of them were not family homes. We have made a distinction between apartments and houses and family homes. I would like to interrogate those figures if the Deputy would be good enough to supply them to me.

The Deputy said that not one red cent in tax is paid in tax. That is misinformation and is not correct. Tax is paid in the form of stamp duty when the properties are bulk purchased and, when dividends are paid out to shareholders, capital acquisitions tax applies. That was misinformation.

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