Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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Actually, on Leaders' Questions this morning, the Taoiseach provided a broad outline of the budget. He said it is going to have three pillars, namely, general balance, a big capital investment programme and then tax cuts for the squeezed middle. He gave us a flavour of it in response to Deputy Howlin's questions about the top earners and their tax rates. This committee has spent a lot of time talking about tax expenditures and trying, with the help of the Parliamentary Budget Office, to estimate the vast size of tax expenditures. The Minister is coming along now with new tax expenditures. Can we take it that whatever tax cuts he and the Taoiseach are finalising, they are going to be somehow sustainable?

A few months ago, for example, Revenue told us that a top tax rate of 43%, as a number of us have proposed in the past, would raise upwards of half a billion euro. The committee reports and agreed reports also mention change that could be made in capital acquisitions tax, CAT, and so forth, though I would not agree with some of those changes. We need to make sure that is going to be sustainable and that we are not handing on a poisoned chalice. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are working this budget out together. Can we take it that these changes will be sustainable?