Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Will Sinn Féin tell us in next year's pre-budget submission that it is going to abolish this tax? We know from recent history that Sinn Féin was against the increase in VAT from 21% to 23%, which brought in ¤750 million. When I looked to see if this year it was suggesting revoking that increase, no such suggestion could be seen. Sinn Féin at the last election said it would abolish the universal social charge. At its last Ard-Fheis, the man without a plan from Donegal said he was also going to abolish the universal social charge. On its first Private Members' motion in the Dáil, Sinn Féin proposed to abolish the universal social charge. However, when I looked for the plan in its pre-budget submission to knock out ¤4.5 billion by universal social charge, I could not find it. The voters need to know if Sinn Féin is going to abolish this measure. That is the real test.

I agree with Senator Barrett that this has become a high taxation economy. Of the adjustment since 2008, 60% has been by way of tax increases, not by reductions in expenditure. I agree with Senator Walsh in that regard. Thus far shalt thou go and no further, as Parnell once said. The top marginal rate of 41% is not 41% but is effectively 52% when the 7% universal social charge and 4% PRSI rates are included. I encourage colleagues to consider Annex F in the statement of the Minister for Finance to both Houses which sets out how progressive our taxation system has become since 2008. It was not progressive up to that point. We now have a system in which the top 10% of income earners pay 60% of all tax. The 70% of people on incomes of ¤50,000 or less pay 19% of all tax. The hocus pocus argument that the rich do not pay their fair share is demolished in every recent commentary not just by the Government but by the OECD and the European Commission. If we have the most progressive taxation system, where is there to go?

We have got to move to a broadened taxation system under which we look at other ways of taxing wealth and income. To take up the suggestion made by my colleagues in Sinn Féin, if ever there was an example of a wealth tax, it is the property tax. Sinn Féin has claimed it would raise ¤800 million in year one of its proposed wealth tax. Next year it will be difficult enough to raise ¤250 million with all of the protests and the rest of it that will follow. Last year Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Finance how much a French-type wealth tax would yield, as proposed by the then French presidential candidate François Hollande. The Minister, honest man that he is, replied that it would yield somewhere between ¤400 million and ¤500 million. When François Hollande got into office, he did not even introduce his proposed wealth tax, while overnight Sinn Féin simply doubled the numbers to ¤800 million on the basis of a reply to a parliamentary question.