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

The Minister's last point goes to the heart of fundamental political reform and how we deal with this finance Bill and other money Bills. We know the prohibition comes from the Constitution but I want to draw to the Minister's attention the proposal of the all-party committee on the Constitution, in its seventh report to the Dáil and the Seanad. In 2002, 12 years ago, it proposed that the Committee Stage provisions in Article 17.2 of the Constitution be removed. We talk about the budget and a proper transparent budget and all the rest but we cannot propose anything in here. This side of the House cannot do anything. No matter what, we cannot make amendments unless we go through these acrobatic-like stages where we have to do a report on this, that and the other. What I am saying to the Minister is that if there is a real, genuine desire for political reform and of how we deal with our budget and finance matters, the prohibition, at least on Committee Stage, on Opposition Members should be lifted - as suggested in the all-party report in 2002 - so that we could have a real battle of ideas and be able to put forward suggestions that could impose a charge on the people and on the revenue. We cannot do this, but it is within the Minister's gift to allow that to happen. It is within the Government's gift to allow that referendum to take place. I do not think such a referendum would be met with opposition from the general public. It is something to which the Minister's party, and all other parties in the House in 2002, had signed up.

On the amendment, the Minister has spoken at length on what the benefits would be for individuals. I acknowledge the Government has increased the threshold from where it was, when it entered government, at €4,000, or just over €4,000, to €10,000 and then from €10,000 up to €12,000 or thereabouts. It needs to go further. The cost of removing those on the minimum wage is in the region of approximately €138 million. This would be money directly injected into the economy. I appreciate there are people who are working part-time who would have a yearly income below €17,500. However, most of them would be low income, low wage, individuals. The majority of them spend all their money in the domestic economy. While there would be a cost to the State, it would be a very positive move in terms of ensuring the injection of money and the injection of consumer spend in the real economy. There would also be the obvious benefits of taking those who are least well of in society out of the USC tax net.

We will deal with this later on in section 13 or 14 when we deal with the special assignee relief programme, SARP. It speaks volumes of the priorities of this Government when one compares the treatment of some of the highest individual earners in this State, where they are having their tax written off for a certain proportion of their income, with the unwillingness of the Minister to move that further bit for these who are earning the minimum wage.