Ahern to honour stamp duty promise

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern will move to implement Fianna Fáil’s promise to scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers the first day the new Government begins work.

In an article published yesterday, Mr Ahern said that the commitments made by his party on stamp duty would become law within weeks.

The measures will only be implemented if — as expected — FF is returned to Government when the Dáil resumes on June 14.

Writing in the Sunday Independent, Mr Ahern acknowledged that home ownership was one of the primary aspirations of the people of Ireland, and provided parents with a valuable asset to pass on to their children.

“Fianna Fáil has always supported home ownership through policy initiatives, and we will continue to do so,” he wrote.

He stressed the importance of the construction sector to the Irish economy and accepted that the uncertainty of the past few months — some of it caused by unchecked speculation over the Government’s intentions on the matter — had the potential to damage the housing market.

Mr Ahern claims that the FF reforms were the only ones that would minimise impact on the housing market. He also contended they were the fairest as they helped first-time buyers only.

Such buyers came to the property market, he continued, without the advantage of house-price appreciation.

FF was widely perceived to have suffered politically because of its delays in unveiling its proposals for stamp duty reform.

Its coalition partners, the PDs, had proposed an elaborate scheme at which the higher rates of duty (the maximum is 9%) would only be paid above certain thresholds and not for the entire amount.

FG and Labour brought forward joint proposals that gave incentives to first-time buyers and also for a simplified system with only three bands of tax — and like the PD proposal, higher interest would only be payable for sums above the threshold amount.

FF claimed its reasons for delaying its proposals was that it didn’t want to create uncertainty in the market, or to begin overheating it again just as house prices were beginning to fall.

Its solution was a much simpler one. It proposed the abolition of stamp duty for first time buyers, with the changes being backdated to April 30 this year.

“Our proposals allow first-time buyers, the life-blood of the housing market, to proceed with their purchases with confidence,” Mr Ahern wrote yesterday.