Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Doherty has made many of my points. Apart from the suffering and hardship the property tax will impose on people, particularly in its second year because the full amount will be payable, it will hit people very hard on top of the accumulation of all the austerity measures, income cuts and levies that have been imposed in recent years. Many people will be seriously affected. It is clear from my clinic every week that a huge and diverse swathe of ordinary citizens are experiencing a level of hardship and financial difficulty almost to breaking point. Life is getting rough for many people. This year there will be even greater levels of hardship. Apart from all that has been well argued and will become evident next year, two of the central arguments the Minister put forward to justify the property tax have been revealed as completely bogus. That is why I commend Deputy Doherty's imagination for managing to get this issue into the committee discussions.

In terms of options for alternatives, two of the central arguments we heard at the time the issue was being debated, have been shown to be utter nonsense. One was that the money derived from the property tax would go into the provision of local services. People should pay it, it was a great idea and it would finance local services.

However, we have discovered that is not true. The first year's take from the property tax went directly towards paying off the debt that was not ours and we have now discovered the second year's tax will go into the setting up of Irish Water, which will facilitate the charging of people for water.

The other argument used at the time was that if only we had had a property tax, we would not have had the property bubble, would not have had all the speculation in property, and the excesses that led up to the crash would not have occurred. Now we are seeing a bubble beginning to develop again in property. Therefore, having property taxes has not stopped the beginning of a development of another bubble. Rents are beginning to rise and prices are rising in certain areas and it seems possible the whole merry-go-round of property speculation will start again. The property tax is not proving something that will stop that. I do not believe it will, because that was not the reason for it in the first place. The presence or absence of a property tax did not explain in any way the reason we had a bubble at all or why we had speculation in housing. That was to do with the marketing of housing and the greed of developers and bankers.

The amendment is well put. I do not believe the Minister of State will respond positively to it, but this year we will see increasing evidence that the property tax is wrong at any time. Alternatives to it should be sought.