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

Senators may be aware that during the response to amendments of a similar nature during Committee Stage in the Dáil, the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, advised that officials in the Department of Finance have already commenced further work to examine the activities of IREFs and 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 in October 2016 and the first returns were due only 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 recommendation but I can confirm that a report of the nature requested will be publicly available in advance of budget 2020.

It sometimes surprises a lot of individuals that the top 20 entities, companies, IREFs and REITs in the country own about 2.8% of the properties. I am aware that there is a lot of focus on these but really the focus should be on the 97%, not just the 2.8%.