Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some cities, regions and countries have considered vacant property taxes or levies. Some people may raise an eyebrow when I tell them that there are, according to the CSO, 40,000 vacant residential properties in Dublin tonight. There may be people in sleeping bags in the doorways of some of them, although I hope they will be in shelters tonight. We have a huge opportunity to bring vacant properties back into the system, which is why we have considered a series of well-funded proposals in the housing strategy to get councils to buy up vacant properties, to get the Housing Agency to buy up properties and to incentivise people to bring vacant properties onto the rental market. However, it has all been a carrot approach so far. It is a big step essentially to tax somebody for inactivity on a property he or she owns, and there are property rights issues and so on linked with that. It is an interesting point and one which we should consider, but I do not want to raise a concern or expectation surrounding it today.

Hoarding can be defined in many ways. A person may own a site and have received planning permission to build 120 houses outside Castlebar ten years ago because property prices at the time made that an attractive business proposition. Property prices may have collapsed by 50% in the meantime but they are now slowly increasing. If it is to be considered hoarding that such a person holds on to a site and planning permission in the hope that the market may improve to make it a viable proposition at some stage in the future, I do not think we should punish him or her for that.