Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Well, because, Deputy, I have long held the view, and I'm aware you probably have a contrary view, that the critical issue in relation to taxation is that the real rate of tax that people bear is the important thing, not the nominal rate. You can have a nominal rate of tax, as happened in Ireland in income tax in the '80s, the '60s, '70s and '80s, but, in fact, if you have very, very high nominal rates, what happens is wealthy people can afford to employ tax advisers or put much of their activity offshore and, thus, end up avoiding all of the ... almost all of the taxation. I would prefer to have a situation where you have real rates of tax, you have minimum effective rates of tax, which is what I proposed, Deputy. And, therefore, everybody is a contributor and those contributions are progressive, but I'm not in favour of capital gains tax rates, for example, like you've suggested, of 60%. That has never been my position. I'm in favour-----