Seanad debates

Wednesday, 5 December 2018

Finance Bill 2018: Committee Stage

 

10:30 am

Photo of Michael D'ArcyMichael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senators may be aware that during his response to amendments of a similar nature put forward during the Dáil Committee Stage debate, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, advised that officials in the Department of Finance have already commenced further work to examine the activities of Irish real estate funds, IREFs, and real estate investment trusts, REITs, in the Irish property market.

It was previously agreed by the Dáil on Committee Stage of the Finance Act 2017 to produce a report in this year’s Tax Strategy Group papers regarding the impact that REITs and IREFs are having on the residential property market. As the IREF regime was introduced from October 2016 and the first returns were only due this summer, the lack of available data limited the detail that could be provided on the subject in this year’s Tax Strategy Group paper. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has therefore already requested officials to undertake further work based on property market data. This will be supplemented by Revenue data due to become available in the new year as further IREF returns will be received and analysed in early 2019. We will have enough data available by the end of the first quarter of 2019 to provide a more complete picture of the activities of IREFs in the Irish property market. It is intended that a detailed report containing this analysis will be presented to the Tax Strategy Group next summer. I therefore cannot accept the Senator’s recommendations.

I wish to put onto the record of the House that the top 20 largest landlords in the State, effectively commercial entities, equate to 2.8% of the properties that are available for rent in the State. The total cumulative amount of these top 20, including these REITs and IREFs, equate to less than 3% of the actual market of the units per year.

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