Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

I will make two points. I do not believe Deputy Doherty can credibly say he wants to widen the tax base and, at the same time, be in favour of the abolition of the local property tax. It is not credible. I do not believe the stance taken by Deputy Doherty is a credible one. I do not think he can argue that he wants to widen the tax base and abolish the local property tax at the same time. The local property tax is a way to widen our tax base so we are taxing more than income. I know there are many difficulties regarding paying the local property tax for households, particularly households that are in financial difficulty or have low incomes, but if we want to widen the tax base, the obvious step is to introduce a well-designed, simple and clear local property tax, which we have in Ireland, that year by year will bring in additional money, the majority of which plays a role in the delivery of local services.

To deal with the point raised by Deputy O'Callaghan, we can look at some of these policy issues but I restate my view that because of how open and small our economy is, if we tried to bring in any form of wealth tax that is not transaction-based, it would simply lead to that capital and wealth moving out of our economy. That is a perfectly credible policy difference we have and can continue to debate.