Results 22,661-22,680 of 27,019 for speaker:Michael Noonan

Written Answers — Department of Finance: Tax Yield (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I am informed by the Revenue Commissioners that the betting duty receipts for traditional, remote and commissions, for January to March 2016 are outlined in the following table. Traditional Bet Remote Bet Commissions Total €m €m €m €m 2016 (Jan Mar) 6.9 4.8 0.4 12.1The receipts shown for each category are provisional at this time.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I thank the Chairman. I thank the committee members for inviting me to discuss the important challenges this country must address as regards housing and homelessness. I also want to wish the committee well in its work. I hope that its work will stimulate debate on further actions that may be warranted to address the constraints impeding the housing sector. Indeed, these issues were an...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I thank the Deputy. VAT is something we will look at. A document was published earlier in our discussions on forming a Government where we signalled this area as one in which a possible initiative would be taken. We were in government six weeks in 2011 when we reduced the VAT on the tourism industry from 13.5% to 9%. The tourism industry attributes to that the lifting of the industry off...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: The take-up is very slow. Much of that is to do with the building industry being on the ground anyway and people not going into it. It was largely directed at disused Georgian houses, especially in Limerick and parts of Dublin. Given the many planning constraints on the development of such houses, they are probably more expensive to renovate. We confined the tax break to owner-occupiers...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: Yes, and this makes it more expensive to deal with them. The Chairman knows my approach to these matters. One does something and hopes it works but if it does not work, one tries something else or modifies what one did. We keep it under review. If there is no take-up, we will have to revisit it. I am reluctant to extend the benefits to developers rather than owner-occupiers. We tried...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: There was a major change around 2004 in the role of local authorities in the provision of social housing. The movement was away from the councils constructing what we used to call council houses to having money to purchase them on the market. Although it was introduced by a Fianna Fáil Minister, I was one of the strong supporters of the new policy. I agreed with the arguments about...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: The Chairman's first point is that if taxes are reduced, they will pay for themselves.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I have been around for a good while and I have been looking for a self-financing tax break for years but I have not yet found one. While I agree with the Chairman that the gross cost might not be the gross figure, there is no self-financing tax break that I know of. There is always a cost to the Exchequer for any tax break. People looking for tax breaks always say, "This will pay for...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I thank Deputy Brassil for his questions. His country is like my country. I know his part of Kerry. It is not so different from west Limerick, where I came from originally. Deputy Brassil is right in that there are a lot of unused property in small towns and villages, but much of this is for social reasons as much as economic reasons. It is the ambition of every young working couple...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: It depends on the model it uses. One of the officials will respond.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: That is unless a PPP model can be devised. The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has been examining this for quite a while and it has not yet proposed a model to me that is off-balance sheet.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: To respond first to Deputy Fergus O'Dowd, I indicated that the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, under the auspices of the National Treasury Management Agency, was providing funding to increase the supply of housing. For example, the ISIF is now in partnership with the private equity firm KKR to support the construction of 11,000 new homes. This €500 million fund, known as...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: Airbnb is looking for a tax break also and wants the room to rent to apply to it. One can see the reasons we will not concede on that issue. The room to rent is for the home owners. It has some potential but not an awful lot. On the question of land, there is land in public ownership and there is land owned by various State agencies and so on. I am disposed to put a fund in place of,...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: Is the arrangement still in place in local authorities where builders can give money instead of an allocation of houses? Is that gone?

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: It is gone completely. The Deputy asked about the Living City initiative and how long one has to stay in the house. The tax break is over ten years. If one purchases and refurbishes the house at a cost of €100,000, one can write it off against tax at €10,000 a year for ten years. There is no obligation to stay but if one moves, one will lose one's benefit. The tendency,...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: That is the job of the Revenue Commissioners. On a point of clarification, the Part V provision is only 10% as it was reduced from the original 20% provided for in the Planning and Development Act in order to reduce construction costs. I said 20%, but that was the historic figure.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: There are so many questions there I had better reply to them.

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I welcome Deputy Quinlivan. It is nice to see a fellow Limerick man on this committee. When I referred to the issue relating to Limerick being of a lesser magnitude than that which relates to Dublin, I was not talking about the local authority lists for social housing. I was specifically talking about homelessness. I think the Deputy would agree that while there is a homelessness problem...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: Yes. First, in reply to Deputy Catherine Byrne's questions, NAMA identified by the end of March 2016 some 6,637 houses that it could transfer to local authorities. The local authorities confirmed that they had demand for 2,540 of these houses and 2,042 were delivered by the end of March. There are approximately 500 that are not yet delivered but they are agreed by both sides as suitable...

Committee on Housing and Homelessness: Minister for Finance (5 May 2016)

Michael Noonan: I thank the Deputy. It is always good to hear his views on housing, given his expertise in construction. He said affordability was the issue rather than supply. However, affordability is a function of supply. If the supply of any good increases, the price tends to decrease. If the supply decreases, the price tends to increase. If supply was to increase, the price would either stabilise...