Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has assured Galway TD Sean Canney that family farms should be exempted from the Residential Zoned Land Tax.
Galway East TD Seán Canney, who had previously said that farm families fear having to sell their family land, raised the issue again in the Dáil.
“Functional farmers who are drawing entitlements fear for their existence because they feel this tax will be imposed on them at a rate of 3% of the development value.”
Much of this land is zoned Residential Phase 2, he added, and couldn’t be developed anyway until Phase 1 lands in the area are already built on.
He asked the government to confirm that Phase 2 lands will not be subject to the RZLT unless they become Phase 1 zoned.
The RZLT will be an annual tax of 3% of a plot of land’s valuation, and will come into effect from 2024.
It is meant to incentivise the construction of housing, and in particular to get landowners to start work on existing planning permissions.
The Taoiseach acknowledged that the tax plan does seem to be affecting “100 or possibly 200 landowners who are not land hoarders”, but who are farmers.
In some instances they have been refused by An Bord Pleanála after appealing to have their farmland removed from the tax map, he added.
“As Deputy Canney mentioned earlier, the issue of R2 zoning arises where somebody’s land is zoned residential but he or she cannot develop it even if he or she wanted to because of the way the development plan is written.”
Taoiseach Varadkar said that he has spoken with the Ministers Michael McGrath and Paschal Donohue about addressing this problem.
“We do accept that anomalies have arisen in cases where somebody has sought a de-zoning or where it is R2 land and we do want to fix it.”
“It may require a change in primary legislation to do so. We should have an answer in the next couple of weeks,” Leo Varadkar said.
