Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. I had to deal with a vote in her absence. We are paired for the next one.

I have listened carefully. The more I listened, the more alarmed I became. One thing that I have learned about politics and taxation over the years is that when politicians get together to decide where taxation should be applied at great levels, they invariably select the area that does not affect their own constituency or electorate. Nothing has changed and things continue as before. I was listening with some interest to the recommendation on land zoning. There were three reports, the Wright report, the Kenny report and the McKinsey report, which dealt with the issue. One was about shifting huge populations, such as when building Tallaght, and so on. They varied. The theory behind the Kenny report was to make land available for as close as possible to cost in order to build houses. Many houses were built in the meantime which that did not apply to. There were many houses where the zoned land was available at an affordable price, but it escalated. When the purchaser went to buy, the scarcity of the product dictated what the price was going to be.

I am fond of Deputy Boyd Barrett. If were to apply some of the principles that he is talking about to my constituency and other constituencies throughout the country, however, there would be devastation. When a property tax was applied to the wealthier areas of Dublin some years ago, it had to be removed. I remind the committee that this is not what it might seem. There are some who are looking for options to apply more taxation to certain people, but hopefully not to themselves. I spoke previously about a wealth tax and its benefits.

I will deal with the concept of a wealth tax. There seems to be some intention to drive people with wealth out of the country. That is an agenda that people are entitled to have, but they know what the consequences of it will be. They cannot force people to remain in the country if they intend to apply a taxation regime. Such a regime is only palatable in somewhere like North Korea, for example. I heard a politician, who is still in the House, mention, at a committee meeting a couple of years ago, North Korea as being the only place that had a regime that was to his liking. The person in question knows who I am speaking about. I would not have mentioned him otherwise. I worry about committees deciding, from the committees' vantage point, what will apply to the greater community outside. They will invariably select the areas that are most beneficial to their own electorate and that will have the least negative impact on themselves.

At the beginning, we were having an adult conversation about property taxation. I have been in this House for a long time. I know that there are consequences when people deviate from their course and involve themselves in a small committee that makes recommendations which cannot be challenged in the House proper. My reason for mentioning this is that I remember, a few years ago, when something happened in the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs that was not to our liking. We discovered that the matter had not come before the committee. Under questioning, the culprit said that something occasionally gets through. Of course things occasionally get through, but they are supposed to. We discussed whether democracy was supposed to apply and so on.

The final point I want to make goes back to the 90% rate. The Chair mentioned that too. It could be ideal for the Chair's constituency and would solve the nation's problems. In my constituency, it could cause havoc. While I have no intention of causing havoc in anybody else's constituency, I would like to feel that whatever I do would be done in a fair-minded manner so that we could get the best we can from it. I am not just saying that because I live in a constituency that has Intel and other large corporations. The fact is that we need these people here. If we run them out of the country or frighten them, as happened in the past in the context of some taxation elements, and if we want that devastation, then so be it. My advice is to be careful. We are going down a tricky road. I know that people on the committee will throw their eyes to heaven and say, "There he goes again." I do not mind. I have no problem with that.

When I was a member of a local authority, I saw individuals who happened to leave near a town be penalised by virtue of the fact that they lived in such a location because they had to give their property up to charity or the community. That would not happen in another area. If that was in the centre of the city, the owner would have been paid. In these cases, however, a certain amount of moral pressure was applied in a way that I would not agree with. My attitude is that if there is some little old guy or lady who has a cottage with a few acres, at the end of the day, it will come down to them. I have always said that they are entitled to their day in the sun, whenever that may be. That is their own property. It is only small. We need to think carefully about how we might lambaste such people in the future, which I have seen happen.