BUILDERS WANT the Government to eliminate stamp duty and commit to infrastructure spending in December’s budget to aid their ailing industry.
The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) yesterday said that the Government should make maintaining and creating jobs a “primary goal” of its four-year budget strategy.
The federation, which represents most of the Republic’s building industry, warned yesterday that huge numbers of construction jobs will be lost, on top of the 100,000 or so that have gone since 2008, if there are further cuts in public spending on public projects such as roads and schools.
The organisation’s director general, Tom Parlon, pointed out that Government spending on such projects is set to fall 24 per cent short of the €6.3 billion target it set for this year.
Mr Parlon said that in light of the Government’s revised budgetary priorities for next year, the target is likely to be €5 billion.
He acknowledged that the Government “keeps talking positively about infrastructure spending” but added that in light of the tough decisions that it is going to have to make to try and start balancing its books, the industry fears that it will not spend enough money to support employment.
In a statement, Mr Parlon argued that cutting productive investment, such as spending on infrastructure, was a false economy.
“The Government’s fiscal consolidation targets for the next four years won’t be achieved without economic and employment growth,” he said.
“If this is to be achieved, the Government has to protect productive spending in the budget. The capital investment programme is particularly crucial in this regard.”
The federation also wants the Government to cut stamp duty on property transactions to zero, as it could help to kick start the market.
“At the moment we have a transaction tax on zero transactions,” Mr Parlon said. “It does not make any sense if it’s not bringing in any revenue.”
He added that stamp duty is effectively preventing people from buying and selling in the first place and cutting it out could bring some activity back to the property market. The federation wants the Government to cut the rate to zero as a first step to phasing out the tax altogether and replacing it with a new, more equitable form of tax. The federation also wants the Government to use the budget to close off what it says is a growing black economy in the building industry.
