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Residential zoned land tax and farmers

A spiteful and penal taxation driven by populism

Letters to the Editor. Illustration: Paul Scott
The Irish Times - Letters to the Editor.

Sir, – To avoid liability for residential zoned land tax (RZLT), landowners will have to apply to dezone their land to the same council planners that have spent two years telling them their land is suitable for development.

Many owners applied to these same planners to dezone their land in 2023 and 2024 and received numerous policy justifications of why their land must remain zoned. None of these policies will have changed in 2025 so the notion that planners will dezone land based on some vague promise in advance of an election is viewed with deep scepticism by impacted farmers.

The demand from the Green Party that land that is not subject to residential zoned land tax must be dezoned is not founded in any planning policy and runs contrary to “compact growth” and “sequential development” but is driven by a desire to spite those owners who will not financially disadvantage themselves for the Government’s electoral benefit. Removing the zoning from these lands ensures that they will not be developed in the life of the development plan. This in no way aids housing delivery but feeds a populist mantra of “use it or lose it” that is not codified in any policy. The fact that an owner does not want to, or is not in a position to, sell their land in 2025 does not change the suitability of the land for development. Zoning is not a determination of the owner’s intentions, nor does it oblige them to sell, and additional land can be zoned at zero cost to provide alternative locations. The fact that much public-owned serviced land remains unzoned due to planning ideology is absurd.

Many will claim that farmers want to have their cake and eat it. The response to that is simple: the land isn’t going anywhere. By the State’s own assessment it remains suitable for development and much of it will be developed when Government policies on capital gains tax and stamp duty make selling a viable option or after owners pass away.

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Until that point, farmers will resist all attempts to drive them from their property by a spiteful and penal taxation driven by populism.

If zoning is to remain a qualitative assessment of the land’s suitability for development then the emotion and populism of left-leaning politicians should have no part in the dezoning of land.

The Green Party has proven why zoning is an unsuitable basis for taxation – it is deeply subjective, always political and rife for populist rhetoric. – Yours, etc,

ALEX WILSDON,

Farmers Against RZLT,

Kilkenny.