Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions for the Minister of State, the responses to which I hope will provide the committee with more factual data. Before doing so, I would like to respond to the Minister of State's point that the facts are the facts. It is not correct to equate a house which is a family home with a second or third house or a portfolio of properties. The portfolio of properties brings in rental income and is a form of speculation. The family home is a roof over the heads of a family, including children. The Minister of State is lumping both together and saying facts are facts. He needs to drill down into the facts a little more before coming out with comments like that.

The property tax is first and foremost a tax on the family home, which is the reason there was such strong resistance to it. The Minister of State and his colleagues used the blunt instrument of Revenue in an effort to break that resistance. The statistics provided to the committee today indicate that the level of resistance to it, despite Revenue being on the battlefield, is, perhaps, a little greater than was previously the case. I want to drill down into those statistics. Approximately 97,000 people did not volunteer to pay the property tax and had it deducted by their employers. Some of them may have liked it that way but I am pretty sure that the vast bulk of them did not. If one tried to put 97,000 in Croke Park there would be an overspill. Will the Minister of State say if that number is increasing or decreasing? Can he provide the committee with the statistics for the previous year and the year before that so that we can see if the curve is upwards or downwards? Similarly, in regard to the 56,000 deferrals, what number of people sought deferrals in the past two years?