Derelict Sites
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

The point Deputy Gould makes about what is derelict, and getting all of that right and underpinning it in legislation, is exactly what we will have to do when we are bringing the legislation through this House. The Deputy is right when he says that it cannot be just a lick of paint or somebody pretending to resolve the dereliction. We all have to be serious about this. We can debate the structure and composition of the tax - all that sort of stuff, including some of the questions the Deputy asked - during the course of the debates on the legislation. We all agree that we do not want this tax to be something that brings in loads of money. We want it to be something that changes behaviour. Quite frankly, we want the financial penalty of having to pay the tax to be something that moves the dial. That is the aim.
It is a bit like the residential zoned land tax we were discussing earlier. I am kind of pleased we held our nerve, as a Government and as an Oireachtas, in relation to the residential zoned land tax. There were teething issues. We all heard from farmers with legitimate issues. The fundamental idea is that it is not for farmers, who are not landlords at all. If someone is sitting on land and hoarding it and it is in a residential zone, they are meant to be building houses on it. Their options are to build houses on the land, sell the land to someone else who will build houses on it, or pay a tax. There is a housing emergency. The residential zoned land tax is in place. We are moving from a levy which is inconsistent, and even the best local authorities have challenges in collecting it, to a tax collected by the Revenue Commissioners.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09