Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was going to make two or three points. Senator Bacik referred to the availability of accommodation and the fact that this budget is doing little for housing. We have seen much investment in student accommodation and hotels but very little investment in residential accommodation by comparison. That is certain the case in Dublin city and I hope that changes. The student accommodation and shared living idea must be contrasted with the foolishness of scrapping bedsits in Dublin in 2013. The measure was introduced in 2009 by a former Minister, Mr. John Gormley, and, in 2013, it resulted in perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 separate dwellings being obliterated in Dublin and people being evicted from that step of accommodation. It was done with the best of intentions and supported at the time by Threshold, the housing charity, but it is a simple fact that it obliterated the first step on the ladder of accommodation for many people, including students.

Senator Kieran O'Donnell spoke about Limerick and Dublin and all these living city initiatives are highly commendable on paper but there are laws relating to landlord and tenant, and it is unlikely that the places I speak of would be occupied by the owners, for the most part. We are speaking about rental properties and the laws relating to landlord and tenant are driving landlords from the market. The balance has been tilted too heavily against any new investment by private landlords in accommodation. They will ask whether even if there are incentives to convert the upper floors of a property and build accommodation, they will be able to control that accommodation or get it back into their possession because of the way landlord and tenant laws have gone.

There is a point relating to carbon taxes and electricity. I put it again to the Government that it is slightly confused with its priorities. On the one hand the Government is pursuing the establishment of data centres in Ireland, which consume vast amounts of electricity, while, on the other, it is pursuing a policy of energy consumption reduction in its entirety. We must work out whether data centres are in our interests.If the current crop of data centres goes ahead, we must determine whether that will lead to an increase in demand for electricity by upwards of 25% to 30% at a time our capacity to produce renewable electricity is strictly limited.

My final point is one I never tire of making. When Mr. Charlie McCreevy became Minister for Finance in 1997, he immediately reduced the rate of capital gains tax from 40% to 20%. The consequence of this change was that the yield went up by between 500% and 600% and remained at that higher level in subsequent years. Some people have an ideological hang-up about capital gains tax, but it has been at 33%, which is a high rate, since the financial crisis. The Government should consider a reduction to 20% on the basis that it will provide us with more money to spend on the expensive social programmes for which there is such a clamour. The point needs to be made repeatedly that high rates of capital gains tax reduce economic activity and the overall take to the Exchequer. We saw the proof of the pudding in that regard in 1997.

I wish the Minister of State well in progressing the Bill through the House. He has been dragged away from Wexford, where he would much rather be today. I doubly thank him on that account.