Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While I appreciate that the recommendation is not acceptable to the House I ask that the Minister would look at it under the miscellaneous section. When discussing section 30 in particular there was a general debate on that section when some Members were asking for enhanced schemes for the likes of Moyross in Limerick, which is going well. Senator Norris and others made the case for parts of Dublin and other cities that have become dilapidated. The Minister was not open to that. He said that he would be amenable to making provision for people to refurbish their existing homes rather than building houses themselves. Had our recommendation been applicable here, that is what it was trying to do. The Minister of State referred to the greener homes scheme. If people were incentivised in some way to convert the garage, do up the room, convert the attic, build a conservatory, whatever it is, this would allow those works to be tax deductible, which would increase the tax take, not least in VAT on materials and also from the labour. The black economy is benefiting from these jobs because people are paying cash and there is no tax benefit for the Exchequer. That is the intention of my proposal. Perhaps in the general spirit of the miscellaneous section the Minister might try to give this proposal some thought in the year ahead. It was alluded to in the debate on section 30.