AN acquaintance said to me peevishly, about a quarrel she was having with a state agency, "It's all very well for you deed I you know how the system works." Indeed I do not. But I sometimes follow up its little mysteries.
For example I saw in an auctioneer's advertisement that Cooldrinagh, the house in Foxrock where the writer Samuel Beckett was born, then for sale, had tax benefits going with it That means that it had qualified, under section 19 of the Finance Act, as a building or garden "of significant historical, scientific, architectural, horticultural or aesthetic interest" for certain tax reliefs.
This qualification is very, very well worth having. It means that anything spent on the repair, maintenance or restoration of the house or garden can be treated as a tax loss. What's more, you don't have to pay Residential Property Tax. (This, by the way, helps me understand why the take from the RPT is so small the best houses in Ireland don't pay it.)
In the case of Cooldrinagh, the lucky owner, provided he or she is not on a small income, does not have to pay £12,750 RPT. That's £12,750 less for the national Exchequer. I don't grudge it a bit. But I wish I'd known the house was open to the public, as it has to be, to qualify under Section 19. I wish I knew whether it was open now. I wish there was some way of knowing where the houses and gardens distinguished enough to merit tax relief are and what days and times they're open and how much entry is.
Correct me, somebody, if I'm wrong, but as far as I know no central list exists, anywhere, much less a list, available to the public, that had Cooldrinagh on it. Naturally enough, the Revenue Commissioners won't tell anyone anything. Except that possibly I was the first person in Ireland to know this there are some 85 houses with Section 19 relief at present.
Bord Failte is supposed to introduce the tax savers to the tax payers in this matter. What we the punters get, in exchange for the lost tax revenue, is the chance to see lovely houses and gardens, most of them lived in. Bord Failte can tell us where they are, in principle, that is.
But amazingly enough, it doesn't have to. The details of arrangements for public access to the buildings or gardens must be given to Bord Failte, says the legislation, but it is given "on the understanding that it may be published by Bord Failte or by another tourism promoting body." "May", not "will".
THE places have to, open, and they have to open for 60 days in a year, at reasonable times, and the admission price must be reasonable and so on. All these are requirements, but there is no requirement that we have to be told about the existence of the places that meet them. Talk about an Irish joke.
Besides, there doesn't seem to be a Bord Failte, in this matter at least, any more. Ms Lynch in the Director General's office explained to me that there are seven tourism regions now, and that each of those would be the ones to know the Section 19 houses and gardens in their area.
She kindly contacted them for me, and five of them replied. Sligo/Leitrim, Cavan/Monaghan, Donegal, Cork/Kerry and Galway/Mayo came up with a total of 21 houses and gardens before I got so ashamed of hassling Ms Lynch that I stopped.
I tried the Shannon region myself. The young lady who answered the phone in the Limerick office didn't have a clue what I was talking about, but Ennis sent me a fax with the details of three places open to the public in the Shannon region under the Section 19 relief scheme. That makes 24 all told.
The young lady in Dublin Tourism phoned me back to say that everything she knows about is listed in the pamphlets Gardens of Ireland and Irish Heritage Properties. Or else why didn't I phone the lady who runs Irish Heritage Properties?
This was a helpful suggestion, meant well. But I had already phoned the lady who runs Irish Heritage Properties, and she had made it clear that only some of the houses and gardens in her booklet have exemptions under Section 19. In any case, she's not a semi state body. She's not charged with looking after the Irish tourist product. Dublin Tourism is. Bord Failte is.
There are unpublished lists of some kind in existence. Ms Lynch sent me the one that I presume is the one available to the Director General of Bord Failte. It lists about 29 houses, if you really stretch the definition of "house" all the way from the Dwyer/McAllister Cottage in there under Lugnaquilla, to Castletown House (closed for an indefinite period.)
STILL, it is a useful list. The house called Charleville, in Enniskerry, is open, for example, during the rest of this season, between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on July 10th-14th, 17th-21st and August 14th-18th.
Who would have guessed that? Mind you, Charleville can't be getting tax relief, because on the evidence of this list it isn't open for anything like 60 days a year. But it isn't possible to tell from the list which are Section 19 claimers and which are not.
The first house listed, Martinstown House, on the Curragh, has no details about what it offers, or when, at all. But when I rang the number given to ask when they'd be open, I got a charming lady whose number it indeed was, but who had never heard of Martinstown House. I heard her saying off phone to her husband "John, there's a woman on the phone saying this place is open to the public."
Then another list came my way. I don't know who compiled it or who has access to it, but it is the one I wanted in the first place, though there are only about 25 houses on it, not the 85 the Revenue Commissioners mentioned.
It has houses that no tourism promoting body seems to have heard of. Liz McManus TD's house in Bray, a great James Joyce house, is on it, a house in Sandycove, a Smithwick house in Kilkenny, Humewood Castle in Kiltegan, St George's in Killiney, Carnelly House in Clarecastle (it wasn't on the list of the nearby Ennis tourist office) and many more gems.
Houses that I, and many other travellers in Ireland, might well like to visit, and that we're entitled to visit. The whole point is that they are part of our general heritage as well as the property of private owners.
Giving tax relief to people who can afford to live in wonderful houses or to have wonderful gardens is an example of giving to them that bath. But I thoroughly approve of it, all the same. I think it is a good idea for the State to help with the cost of keeping old houses going. I'm, less impressed by allowing their owners off Residential Property Tax.
But that's not my point. My point is that schemes like this need to be well and openly administered, if the PAYE worker is to retain confidence in them.