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A NUMBER OF Green Party politicians have not held back today in voicing their disdain at a decision to defer taxing undeveloped land.
It is understood the Greens side of the government were “blindsided” by the Irish Independent report that Finance Minister Jack Chambers is set to defer the Residential Zoned Land Tax for another year.
The tax is targeted at zoned, serviced residential development lands, including mixed-use lands, with the tax rate set at 3% of the land’s market value annually.
The new tax was set to kick in in February, with bills coming due in May 2025.
Last year, local authorities published maps of areas where landowners will be subject to the new tax with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien stating that only one-sixth of residentially-zoned land is activated for housing during a given local authority’s six-year development plan.
This tax measure, which has had a long-lead in time, was promoted by government as a measure to incentivise landowners to use existing planning permissions for housing.
Chambers told RTÉ News yesterday that he intends to defer the tax for one year only, as he wants to ensure active farmers are fully excluded from it.
“I’m working on proposals to defer the residential zoned land tax for a further year, and this is to exclude active farmers from this tax.
“It would place a disproportionate and unfair burden on active farmers if this tax was to be imposed annually,” he said.
His comments came after Taoiseach Simon Harris said it is “offensive” to describe farmers as land-hoarders and defended plans to defer the tax.
“As long as I’m Taoiseach, no active farmer is going to pay a residential land tax – simple as.”
“This land tax is absolutely about making sure people can’t hoard land. It was never meant to be about penalising an active farmer,” said the Taoiseach.
Since those remarks, a number of members of the Green Party have voiced their anger over the move.
It is understood those within the party are angry that “no heads up” was given that this was in the works, particularly as the tax was legislated for back in 2021, and deferred in last year’s budget so that everyone could get their ducks in a row.
Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan said if the government are serious about tackling the housing crisis then land that is zoned and serviced as well as earmarked by councils for housing should be utilised, and if not, taxed for lying idle.
She told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland: “We’re in the run up to an election and we know that what we’re seeing right now is a step back from something that was agreed five years ago.”
Land hoarding is one of the biggest problems in terms of delivering affordable housing, she said, stating that “now we’re putting it probably on the never, never, not even on the long finger. For a Fianna Fáil minister to do this particularly is shocking”.
She added that the finance minister, as a Dublin minister, is going to have to stand on doorsteps in Dublin West and defend putting off the tax measure that she said will fundamentally deal with the price of housing.
Deferring the tax is “like hiding food in a famine”, she added.
Hourigan said there is already an exemption for farmers who are working the land, whereby farmers can opt out and ask for their land to be dezoned.
Education Minister Norma Foley today defended the decision, stating that she wanted to commend the finance minister, calling the deferment “the right move”.
“I think there’s a recognition that we also have to support farmers who are active on the ground. Agriculture and its importance should never be underestimated. Those who are actively farming, those who are using the land for the purpose of agriculture, I don’t think that they should be caught in a bind,” said Foley.
“So we need to reflect on that, and we need to preserve that, but equally so, we need to drive ahead, obviously, with housing,” she said, stating that it was about “doing both equally and doing both fairly”.
It is understood the Greens want a solution found sooner rather than later and are seeking a reversal of the decision to defer the tax.
Those within the party state that there is real concern that speculators, who are sitting on parcels of land that has been zoned, have no intention of building on the land, and are simply sitting on it as its value increases every year.
While the Greens are now at loggerheads with their coalition partners in government, there is an assumption now that a solution will be found and the deferment will not take place.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One today, Minister of State Ossian Smyth said: “Here we are three years later [from the original agreement] and some politicians think it should be deferred for another year”.
When asked about the decision to defer the tax, he said: “I’m sure they won’t [defer it], how could they, that’s not going to happen.”
Pushing out the tax is being seen by the Greens as an own goal of sorts by Fianna Fáil given that the party holds the housing brief and also as an easy topic for Sinn Féin to highlight.
Sinn Féin has criticised the move, saying that the deferral will benefit developers who are speculating on land.
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If the land is been farmed, OK then it seems reasonable not to tax with the proviso that it 100% owned by the farmer, other sites that are serviced but not used tax them …..why wait another year.
@Paul O’Mahoney: there isn’t a team of builders sitting outside zoned land waiting to start. There is enough land zoned to for 10 years to keep the building industry going. Zoning is councillors voting on a piece of of land, planning for building an estate is a whole different set of hurdles to clear
@P. V. Aglue: But is it equitable to tax land that is presently being farmed , that’s the issue.
@P. V. Aglue: there’s not enough land zoned, that’s one of the reasons why we’re reviewing the NPF, to account for extra population and knowledge of new 10 year dev plans instead of 6 year plans also coupled with the fact that housing targets are targets and not caps anymore, as the attorney general set out in his submission to government. The new s605 in new planning bill sets this out
@Paul O’Mahoney: no, it’s not equitable to tax farm land. I’d also challenge your comment about it being 100% owned by the farmer. Farmers regularly let (as both tenant and landlord) land on an annual basis for agricultural purposes. That could be the test, not whose name it’s in.
@John Moylan: Well if a piece of land is rented to / from its doesn’t change who owns the land.
@John Moylan: If land is owned by a farmer, then don’t tax it.
If owned by a developer then tax it, whether left fallow or rented for farming.
@John Lee: zone the whole country, still won’t solve the housing shortage, not enough building workers. The tax will be added to the costs and passed onto the buyers just like development levies
Jack Chambers Is useless
@Argus Romsworth. In the meantime our Pensioners pay 40 per cent tax on income above €18 000 [ € 350 pw)
@sean callan: Again this is in your favour as it’s marginal relief, if you aren’t happy you can contact revenue and pay tax in the normal way.
@Argus Romsworth: Why???
@Paul O’Mahoney:
I am paying tax tax normal way.
What other options do OAPS have??
@pat: his record in transport would rival Murphy’s in housing. Certainly one of the worst ministers this country has seen in the last decade
@Sean Callan: I thought you were paying 40% as you are availing of marginal relief, the normal way is for you to go through tax bands with tax credits, and tax is at 20% upto 40k approximately then it 40%
Are you earning 40k plus ?
@sean callan: simply not true
@sean callan: if they are single, it’s 36k for a couple, plus this is income typically derived from private pensions, with such pensions having benefited from 40% tax relief.
@Argus Romsworth: So is MaryLou…and all the rest of her party… They have objections to every planning application in their own areas.
@Paul O’Mahoney:
There is only option for
Pensioners. €18000 (€36000)
couple.All income over that is subject to 40 percent tax.
A change is long overdue
Like all Marxists the Greens never saw a Tax they didn’t like!
@Jonn: you could improve your contribution to this discussion by proposing some alternative incentives to push land hoarders to use the land for housing.
@Jonn:
Like the rest of our posh home grown socialists boys and girls, they do not comment on inheritance tax for some reason.
it certainly looks like there’s an election this Autumn
Could be that a lot of well-heeled land owners look forward to a steady government and continuing healthy economy that offers an only Up increase in value for such land. Everything is circular. How perhaps the majority of said land owners vote is already decided. FF/FG know this, and do not wish to rock the boat or bite the hand that feeds. The naive vote for untested idealists, but 99% of answers relate to money.
So the even do ,we are part of everything we know Notting brigade and irish citizens keep voting for these entitled chancers
Ah, the greens and taxes Solves nothing. Yet people will vote for them.
How much of undeveloped land is owned by politicians, their families or friends? …..not going to be taxed!
@Brian Hunt:
How much of undeveloped land and property speculation has contributed to the family wealth of our posh socialist boys and girls in the Dail.
Well if there’s one thing that upsets the greens it’s losing tax.
Is the government not able to issue planning permission due to lack of inventory? I highly doubt it. NGO divisive games is what I think.
If the greens feel so bad about it ‘ pull the bleeding plug’. There won’t be any chance of that happening though.
@Derek Poutch: That particular threat appears to have run dry. The Greens got their way a lot in the early years due to it, and now that the current Dail is nearly to the end of it’s term, you can see cracks beginning to develop, and the bigger parties seem to be trying to distance themselves from the Greens.
About time someone stood up to the Greens. They need to be put in their place. They have destroyed this country with their wishy washy shite. Tax everyone and everything. GET THEM OUT
@John Hally: 100% they are causing more harm the longer they’re in
Before long, they will be taxing people’s lawns……
We get what we vote for, time after time.
@MN: you’d question whether we do actually vote for these. The general sense is that very few would vote ffg, but somehow they keep coming back…
@Fintan Stack: But that’s it. None of the 3 parties that form the current government could make up a majority on their own, and FF and FG do not even make up 25% of the current Dail individually, yet they have actually been the opposition parties to each other since the establishment of the state, either by majority or by creating a coalition with a minor party like the Greens or PDs, and they took such a beating in the last election, that they took the unprecedented step of forming a coalition with the other, to keep SF from forming a government or face another election, and they still needed the Greens to get them over the line. That act in itself was seen as betrayal by many of their supporters, and adding the Greens didn’t appeal to the rest of us after the water charge debacle.
Oh the builder and the farmer must be friends
One man likes to swing a rope, the other likes to act the dope,
But that’s no reason why they can’t be friends!
Apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein!
Are the greens only realising now that FF have always and will always look after their rich friends?.
Taxing hard work has been the norm and now taxing delayed activity? The long term inactive will be scared.
The GREENS will eventually WAKE Up Is the New leader sleeping like the lat Guy
Why should any landowner ( farmer or other) be taxed just because a government agency draw up a strategic housing plan that includes their land ? Land that they want to continue to work .
Are the government the largest landowner in the state?
As usual Fine Gael an Fianna Fail back down when there is a chance of taxing wealthy land owners, what a useless government!! Housing will never be solved until land is taxed to free it up and stop hoarding
@John Kelly: or they realise that they need to be sure that some who already pay tax on their earnings from the lands they work are not taxed again, and they are not all farmers.
Hopefully they will come to a mature compromise
The Greens are blind on all sides
They’re such stone cold losers. Every single one of them.
LOL.
There are no builders waiting for work..they are flat out already . Surely anyone can see that. No government has a magic wand for this.
So, how soon do we set up the tribunal that will establish the real reasons for this disgraceful decision?
The housing crisis is FFG policy working as designed. It’s simple economics. Their aim is to keep property prices rising, it’s not in their interests to have property prices fall.
It’s basic supply and demand, if there is enough supply of houses property prices will fall, that’s unavoidable. Then landowners, landlords, investors and banks will all be in negative equity. FFG won’t allow that.
have your say