Finance Bill 2025 [Certified Money Bill]: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

We need to get realistic about when the tax breaks will end. For building an apartment now in an urban area, including the town grants, VAT and everything added up, the breaks are about €230,000 to €260,000 per apartment. Is that enough? Will that be enough? Will we be coming next year and saying developers need more for the viability gap? At what stage is it enough to build? We can look at the profits of many of our developers - we can go into their accounts online and look at their annual profits, which is all publicly available information - and what they are drawing down and sharing with shareholders. Are we basically subsidising that as a State because they are making profit and these huge profits are then going to shareholders? That is what it comes down to. We are reducing our tax base that we could use to pay for disability services, education, healthcare - you name it - and the plethora of problems we all see on a daily basis in our own communities. That is what it comes down to. What and who are we prioritising?
We need houses built. We can chat separately about the different ideas we could bring forward on housing.
The Social Democrats have ideas, which we have spoken about at length. What it really comes down to is the question of what a budget represents and who we prioritise. In this case I strongly believe it is not going to those who need it most nor do I believe we are going to suddenly see a plethora of viable homes as a consequence. We have relied on the private sector to deliver up to this point and it has not. It is like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

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