Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that. The Minister disputes my figures, which are from his own officials and have been published in table 5 of the Tax Strategy Group's papers. The difference is that the group tells us that 647,000 will benefit. That is a lot of people, representing the top 23% of income earners. The Minister says that there are approximately another 400,000. In fairness, he also says that they will not benefit in cash terms. I am not talking about benefits in Paschal's head, though. People - the plumbers and all the others the Minister mentioned - are under pressure, but they will not see a real benefit. They will not have more take-home pay as a result of this measure because they do not pay tax at the higher rate. They may be liable for it, but their tax credits absorb their tax liability. It would be difficult to knock on their doors and say that we changed the law for them and they benefited from it if their tax liability stayed the same. They will not be liable anymore in theory, but they will not actually benefit.

This measure will cost €750 million and only benefit the top 23% of income earners. There was a fairer and better way. People on medium earnings, average earnings and beyond average earnings could have benefited from a tax package that had a better distributional impact. This better way would have been to cut USC so that someone on €35,000 would not end up getting less of a benefit than someone on €135,000, but the latter is the package that the Minister has put together. Under this section, someone on €135,000 will get a benefit more than four times greater than someone on €35,000 will.