Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am well aware there is a time element here. I appreciate the Minister's robust defence of his ideological position and the tax priorities of this Government. Fine Gael is a high tax party. The only problem is that it is a high tax party when it comes to people on a very low income and disposable income. That is the only difference in terms of philosophy. The taxes have to be brought in because the deficit has to be reduced. In order to get people back to work money has to be invested in the economy. Instead, the Minister wants to levy more taxes on people to pay. I refer to the water charges, property taxes, increased carbon taxes that were introduced in previous years, increased excise charges, prescription charges and medical charges. All of those charges are indiscriminate of people's income or ability to pay. It is not that the Minister is preventing all these additional taxes. The problem is that bills are falling in the letterboxes of people who may be out of work or on very low incomes. The Minister was right with his suggestion of a 1% reduction because the higher the income the more a person will benefit. He did it the obvious way but he could have done so in a different way.