Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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148. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the tax penalities for developers hoarding up land banks around Dublin; his plans to introduce a new policy to ensure land is made available for residential housing in Dublin; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52354/13]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The only penalty of this nature applicable to the hoarding and non-development of sites is the derelict sites levy provided for under section 23 of the Derelict Sites Act 1990. This levy, which only applies to sites in urban areas, allows local authorities to apply an annual levy of 3 per cent of the market value of the derelict, but potentially developable, site in question subject to the satisfaction of certain criteria. The levy has proven difficult to apply in practice as the non-development of the sites in question may be due to factors outside the control of the site owner.

With regard to the availability of land for housing development in the Dublin area, a recent data gathering exercise conducted by my Department indicated that there is already appropriate residential zoning of land for upwards of 30,000 new homes in the Dublin region, across the four Dublin local authorities. Accordingly housing supply in the Dublin area is not necessarily constrained by the lack of available land for housing but rather the market viability of developing new housing projects having regard to the land acquisition, development and construction costs of bringing new houses and apartments to the market, combined with the issue of the availability of credit, both development finance and mortgage credit and certain other factors.