Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. Having the benefit of sitting in the Chair for the last hour I will not rehash some of the things that have been said. Having said that, I will contradict myself and say that the one point I will make has been made by two previous speakers. It is something I have worked on and have had a lot of communication on with the Minister, Deputy McGrath. It is the area of the residential zoned land tax.

While I welcome the commitment in the budget to suspend this tax for a year to the beginning of 2025 to allow for remapping and, presumably, further opportunity for people for whom it is applicable to appeal, I plead with the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy McGrath, to open channels of communication with the Department of housing and local government. My experience of the issue in the year gone by is that there was a big breakdown in communication as to who this tax applies to and who it does not apply to. Active farmers who are farming land which is not serviced were not to be included. Yet, when this was highlighted to certain county councils it was not accepted. That is where communication is needed on how the changes are enacted. In one conversation on this issue in the year gone by, a council official told me his interpretation was that if it was serviceable it was to be included.His interpretation to me was around whether it was serviceable, and as I said to him on the day, Rockall is serviceable if we put our minds to it. That the lands were serviceable was never meant to be, in my opinion, the interpretation. While they were not serviced, they were serviceable.

I welcome the change and the suspension until 2025 but with the best will in the world, if the local authorities do not get the planning and the terms and conditions as to who this tax is applicable to or not, then nothing is going to change, other than that the years will elapse. I welcome the tax, with the land that is being hoarded in mind. It is evident already that there are developments in the pipeline that may well not have proceeded if there had not been the threat of the tax. I am not opposed to the tax but as somebody who is elected to the agricultural panel and my party's Seanad spokesperson on agriculture, I am representing active farmers. I know there are farmers whose land is due to be developed and will be developed. They will move on, but we cannot tax somebody who is farming where there is absolutely no potential for their land to be developed, even if they wanted to develop it in the morning. A lot of councils have gap filling policies where some of the farmland is a field or plot of land set apart from the development. If the owner of such land were to say they wanted to develop their site, the council would tell them they could not do so until the land between their site and the settlement had been developed. On the one hand, councils are telling people they cannot develop this land and, on the other hand, they are saying they are liable for this tax.

I know this is a Revenue issue and that this is the Minister of State's brief in the Department. If, however, we do not get this right as regards mapping and the terms and conditions the Minister has laid down regarding who this tax applies to at local authority level, we will be back here making representations to the Minister of State and the Minister next year on behalf of people who are going to be taxed and who, genuinely and through no fault of their own, cannot avoid same.