Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State would make my day if he were to accept it. I believe the wrong Minister is sitting opposite me, although strange things happened yesterday when the Minister accepted an Opposition amendment. The Minister of State should not be outdone by the Minister; he could grab the headlines by accepting the amendment.

The amendment would require the Minister to prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on options available for the abolition of the local property tax. As the Minister of State will gather from the wording, the amendment provides me with an opportunity to raise the issue of the unfairness of the property tax and the manner in which it is being imposed. It also draws attention to the fact that the rushed legislation on the local property tax created a significant imposition on individuals and sowed great confusion. I refer to the manner in which the Government handled the legislation and shut down debate on it on Committee Stage. Its flawed approach comes with a €3 million price tag.

Sinn Féin is committed to repealing the local property tax and has published legislation to that end. People are justifiably angered by this tax. While it does not feature in this Bill because it was introduced last year, it has been imposed in part this year and the full amount will be recouped in 2014.

People are very mindful, given the date that is in it and the deadlines for making their returns. There have been number of fiascos in the property tax. I come from a Gaeltacht community. I tabled a question to the Minister for Finance yesterday.

It is very clear that the Revenue is requesting certain property-holders who live in the Gaeltacht or who have part of their addresses in Irish are appearing in duplicate form on the register and, therefore, are being asked to pay twice the amount of property tax. However, the computer system shows that the house is not being rated at a higher level of tax but that in the view of the Revenue, that person owns two houses because one of the names is in Irish which was sourced from a utility company and the other one is in English which it may have sourced from the electoral register or from the local authority. This is a significant issue.

I accept that human errors will occur and that the register is large. However, data software is available to deal with such work but either the Department or the Revenue has decided not to use it. This is surprising, given that this tax brings in €500 million. It seems the view is that it does not matter if we stick those in the Gaeltacht for another property that they do not have - they will sort it out themselves and tell the Revenue and everything will be grand at the end of the day.

This is an unfair imposition on individuals. I do not exaggerate the point. Many people in Irish society can well afford to pay this tax. I will raise the issue again and next year I will bring forward an amendment. I do not know the Minister of State's personal circumstances and I do not wish to delve into them. However, in the tax code, Ministers of State, senior Ministers, office-holders in this House, can have tax written off if they have a second property. There is a reason for that - it is called the dual abode allowance-----