Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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416. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government in relation to pyrite related property tax exemption, if he will clarify if engineers reports and geotechnical tests results which were completed prior to the publication of IS398 which will have cost the house owner thousands of euros including VAT will be accepted for exemption from property tax. [20429/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Section 10A of the Finance (Local Property Tax) Act 2012 (as amended) provides for a temporary exemption of at least three consecutive years from the charge to Local Property Tax (LPT) for residential properties that have been certified as having "significant pyritic damage".

Regulations are currently being finalised in my Department and will be published shortly which will set out the methodology for the assessment of dwellings to establish significant pyritic damage. The Regulations will require that homeowners demonstrate significant pyritic damage in accordance with the recently published standard by the National Standards Authority of Ireland, I.S. 398 – Reactive Pyrite in sub-floor hardcore material – Part 1. This standard provides guidance on the building condition assessment, as well as on the sampling and testing to be carried out to establish the presence of significant pyritic damage.

To be eligible for an exemption from the LPT, a homeowner must obtain a certificate, from a competent person, confirming the presence of significant pyritic damage on the basis of a building condition assessment in accordance with I.S. 398-1:2013 and having regard to the outcome of the testing and classification of the sub-floor hardcore material carried out in accordance with I.S. 398-1:2013. Eligibility for an exemption will be determined by reference to the presence of significant pyritic damage in the relevant property concerned.

Conscious of the need to reduce costs to affected homeowners, provision is being made in the Regulations for the use, where feasible, of the results from testing of the sub-floor hardcore undertaken prior to the publication of I.S. 398-1:2013, to classify the hardcore material if the testing that has been carried out is in accordance with, or equivalent to, the test methods provided in I.S. 398-1:2013, and this has been validated as such by a competent person.

A Building Condition Assessment in accordance with I.S. 398 will be required to be carried out by a competent person irrespective of when the testing is, or was, carried out.

A homeowner cannot claim the exemption until the relevant certificate has been issued in respect of the residential property. He or she should notify the Revenue Commissioners at that stage to claim the exemption. Special arrangements will apply in respect of 2013 and 2014 to facilitate homeowners in claiming an exemption. While homeowners who do not have the relevant certificate on the first liability date of 1 May 2013 (liability date for 2013), or by 1 November 2013 (liability date for 2014), will be required to pay LPT for those periods, they will be able to reclaim the tax paid if they obtain the certificate by 31 December 2013 and notify the Revenue Commissioners in writing on or before 31 January 2014. As an alternative to such retrospective treatment they can opt to start the period of exemption from the liability date following the issue of the certificate.