The Government has no plans to reverse the 9 per cent stamp duty on residential investments imposed last month, despite such a recommendation in the report on the rented property sector.
A majority of the 18 members of the Commission on the Private Rented Residential Sector are seeking the change in the stamp duty rate in the report, which will be considered by the Cabinet on Tuesday.
The commission considers the increase, introduced following the third report by Dr Peter Bacon, is likely to deter investment in premises for rented accommodation, and would therefore lead to higher rents. The move has forced investors out of the market, leading to a sharp increase in rent.
Meanwhile, it is understood Dr Bacon has told the Government he is not interested in carrying out further such reports for it. It had been expected that he would be retained in the run-up to the next general election. A spokeswoman for the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said yesterday there were no plans to reconsider the 9 per cent stamp duty rate. She said the Government was only at the stage where it had been asked to approve the Commission on the Private Rented Residential Sector report. There had been no plans, she said, to ask Dr Bacon to carry out further reports. The 9 per cent rate applies to all houses and apartments bought by investors since June 15th. The rate is considerably higher than recommended in the Bacon report, which proposed a sliding scale, rising from 3.5 per cent to 9 per cent, depending on the value of the property. Responding to details of the Commission on the Private Rented Residential Sector report, which were published in yesterday's Irish Times, Ms Carina Warner of Hooke & McDonald estate agents said rental levels in Dublin were "soaring". "The supply is simply not there and there is no competition so the prices are getting higher," she said. The situation was likely to worsen with the annual surge in demand for apartments around August and September, she said. Meanwhile, the Labour Party senator, Mr Brendan Ryan, has called for the immediate publication of the commission's report. He said the Government's failure to do so was a "decoy for inaction" on the crisis in the private rented sector. "To the best of my knowledge, this report was signed off by the members of the commission last week. It now seems clear that the continued delay in its publication is deliberate," said Senator Ryan. "The Minister and his Department appear to have made every effort to hold up the publication of the report so as to ensure the Dail was in recess."
The time lag, he said, had given landlords ample opportunity to "de-tenant their properties in advance of any new laws". The Fine Gael spokesman on housing, Mr Billy Timmins, called on the Government to publish legislation dealing with the measures outlined in the report. "The commission's central recommendation that the Government reconsider its ill-thought-out 9 per cent stamp duty on residential accommodation is most welcome and vindicates the position taken by Fine Gael on the issue. It was always clear this additional tax will only increase rents further," he said.
The report also recommends that tenants living in rented apartments and houses for six months be given a statutory right to renew their leases for up to four years. Mr Kieran Murphy, director of Threshold, the tenants' rights organisation, said yesterday that as a member of the commission, he was not in a position to comment on the report until it was published next week.