At the weekend, the Business Post reported that the introduction of a vacant homes tax is in doubt. When my colleague, Deputy Cian O’Callaghan, asked the Taoiseach about this yesterday, he said that information collected by Revenue related to local property tax is being analysed to assess the merits and inform the design of a vacant property tax. This seems to suggest that the Taoiseach believes the merits of a vacant homes tax are in doubt. His Fine Gael Government colleagues have been promising to introduce one since 2016. It is already six years overdue. Very simply, is the Taoiseach in favour of a vacant homes tax? Will he commit to introducing a vacant homes tax and when will that be done?

The issue is that the Housing for All strategy includes an action for the Department of Finance to collect data on vacancy with a view to introducing a vacant property tax. That has been our position. As the Deputy knows, local property tax, LPT, returns include questions such as whether a property is vacant and the reason for the vacancy if the period of vacancy exceeds 12 months. The aim was to provide an indicative profile of vacant residential properties which will help to inform policy. Revenue has completed preliminary analysis of the LPT returns received to date. This has been shared with the Department of Finance. It suggests that levels of vacancy are low across all counties. Revenue will publish a profile of the occupancy data from the LPT returns in due course.