Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The Minister for Finance indicated he is not clear on the purpose or the intent of such a report. A commitment under the renewed programme for Government is to move on the introduction of a site valuation tax for non-agricultural land. However, considerable groundwork will have to be done on this before the tax can even be introduced. The starting point for this would be establishing the necessary valuation and registration process.

Stamp duty is not payable on new houses below 125 sq. m. bought by owner-occupiers or any property bought by a first-time buyer as a sole and main residence. While the documents relating to the conveyance of such properties would still have to be stamped, the fact no duty is payable on these documents could complicate the compilation of house price information. Certain transactions involving the transfer of a house such as a deed of asset transferring property from parents to children, the purchase of a local authority house and certain transfers between spouses also do not require the presentation of a document for stamping.

The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government already publishes statistics on house prices on its website showing average prices per quarter of new and second-hand houses and apartments. The data is broken down by region and city areas and there are other non-governmental statistics on house prices such as the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government with responsibility for housing, Deputy Finneran, recently announced several bodies and agencies are in talks to establish a national house price register.

A report based on the stampable value of property transactions will not be of significant additional benefit. There will also likely be data protection issues on disclosing details of individual property transactions which would have to be addressed.