Use tax on speculators for social housing

CIARAN CUFFE (Irish Examiner letters, September 11) details Green Party housing strategy, presumably only one of many political pamphlets that will seek to festoon your letters page between now and the general election.

I’d like to add a suggested remedy to those outlined in his letter: that the 20% capital gains tax levied on profits generated through the sale of development land should be ring-fenced and applied only to the provision of social and affordable housing.

Then at least the speculators could be seen to be making some contribution to the resolution of a problem they are at least partly responsible for creating.