Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)

I felt at the time that some of these tax exemption sections were quite good, such as the section dealing with nursing homes, but the holiday home exemptions went on for too long. Senator Ross is right about that. They should have been closed off in many areas.

In my home town there were a number of planned developments and we were lucky they did not go ahead. If, however, the section was taken out, people who rented out a business such as a shop using section 23 relief to shelter the income from the shop would now be in a situation where the rent from the shop would no longer be sheltered and they would have to use what was left from the after tax income from the shop to pay off the section 23 mortgage because none of the section 23 properties would provide any income, not even enough to pay off management fees. We would then be left with a situation, especially for section 23 holiday homes, where the estates would not be managed properly because there was no income and they would deteriorate.

I agree with the thrust of the recommendation but it is a shame the Labour Party did not allow for more time, perhaps three months. The idea is good and the Minister is looking at the situation. I raised concerns previously about the selling off of these estates. There was a case in Kenmare where the auctioneers were involved in a fire sale. The Irish Examiner property supplement published a headline reading "Fire sale in Kenmare". The auctioneers were telling their friends they should buy these because they are bargains. Auctioneers are supposed to achieve the maximum price, not sell bargains. The loans were held by Anglo Irish Bank - the taxpayer - which told the receiver to maximise the value of the properties, who then told the auctioneer to sell the property and the auctioneer told his friends they were bargains. They were selling them below the market rate. We told those auctioneers they were selling below the market rate, that we had sold six similar properties in the last six months and we estimated that the price being asked would cost the taxpayer €1 million.