Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason I do not support the policy brought forward by Deputy Farrell is contained in some of the figures she read out, where she referred to the high marginal tax rates that would be faced at the levels of income that would be affected by this change. Were the personal tax credit of €1,650 to be tapered out at a rate of 5% per €1,000, or a loss of just over 8% of additional euro of income, the marginal tax rate within that taper zone would be just over 60%. Once you moved beyond that taper period, at income of more than €120,000, the marginal rate would revert back to 52%.

We have a long-running debate in the Oireachtas on the need to attract hospital consultants back to Ireland. These hospital consultants may well have been educated here in Ireland by the Irish taxpayer and have moved abroad. Many would claim larger numbers of them being present in our health system in the future would help with its better performance.

For hospital consultants alone, before we get onto the whole argument regarding the need for our personal tax code to be competitive, particularly given that we have now decided to enter the OECD agreement, I believe those marginal tax rates are too high. The vast majority of people I represent are paid far less than the income figures we are debating here. However, some people on those levels of income are important to the functioning of our health service and-or very important to large employers we have here in Ireland. I want those people in Ireland rather than in other countries and that is why I do not support the policy proposed here. Therefore, I do not support its inclusion as a report in the Finance Bill.