Mr. Tom McDonnell:

I do not believe it is the role of the State to be subsidising the private pensions industry. Broadly the role of the State is to ensure that all people within the State have an income sufficient to their needs. We should not be providing any tax breaks. That would be our longer-term position. However, a budget is a year-by-year process and one would do that on a phased basis over time and in 2013 we would do it by reducing tax relief to the standard rate, which principally would affect people on higher incomes.

On the property tax issue, 70% or 80% of people own their own homes but the one cohort of people who do not, by and large, are those at the bottom of the scale. That is the one group we could be sure would be exempt. It would have positive redistributive effects from that point of view.