Gerard Murphy (Cork North West, Fine Gael)

The continuing increases in motor tax have a detrimental effect on the quality of life, particularly of rural dwellers. The tax must be paid irrespective of people's ability to pay. People in rural Ireland have no choice as without public transport a car is essential. Two cars are essential for most households where one partner must drive to work and the other must take children to and from school and other social events. Most of these families live on the minimum wage and household budgets are tight. In order to survive, these families must have discretion on how they spend their money. However, like many other tax charges such as water charges, refuse charges, development charges, car tax is a standing charge which must be paid irrespective of the family's income or ability to pay.

This situation is made worse by this Government's policies. Despite the lip-service paid to rural communities, the Government continues to deplete rural towns and villages of essential services through policy after policy. Post offices are closing down at an abnormal rate as a result of a successful collaboration between the Government and An Post. The Government is the only shareholder in An Post and therefore, one must assume An Post is carrying out the will of its shareholder. If not, the Government has the power to deal with the situation to ensure An Post carries out its policy. The current policy and collaboration appears a clever tactic to close post offices in our towns and villages.

Pensioners in rural areas have no choice but to have a car. The nearest post office could be 15 or 20 miles from them. The nearest cash machine and many other services are inaccessible without a car. Pensioners on €164 per week need transport. They must have a car or take a taxi and to get to even the most basic service can cost them up to half of their pension. The free travel scheme introduced for pensioners is an excellent scheme and works well for those living in cities. However, its effectiveness is limited in rural areas because no public transport is available. Pensioners are still expected to pay an ever increasing tax on their cars. Those in rural areas who value their independence have no choice in the matter and will sacrifice many ordinary everyday necessities to maintain their independence.

This Government continues to tell us it is a low tax Government. Nobody argues that it is a low income tax Government for the wealthy. These people have no problem paying stealth taxes such as motor tax or service charges. The story is different for people on middle incomes, those in the minimum wage group or people on social welfare. Even with the increased stealth charges the Government is imposing on local authorities, these authorities are still grossly under-funded.

Apart from roads, basic services such as the disabled person's grant have been suspended for almost a year. Nobody can justify the fact that elderly people are living in damp cold conditions without a shower or a bathroom. This is what the policies of this Government impose on our elderly and disadvantaged. The net result of these taxes, imposed under the pretext of local authority funding, is that the poorest and weakest in our society must pay taxes such as car tax, irrespective of their ability to pay. On the other hand, they cannot depend on county councils to provide a disabled person's grant, an essential repairs grant or a half decent road to their houses.

According to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, motor tax is for the restoration, upgrading and repair of county and regional roads. However, the Department makes such a complicated affair of funding local government that nobody is ever sure what funds are being increased and which are being decreased. The refusal of the Government to fund benchmarking for local authorities has hampered them from increasing road funds from their own resources. On 27 January this year the Minister, Deputy Cullen, had the cheek to threaten local authorities that if they did not continue to put money into local roads, he would punish them by cutting back their funding. He expects local authorities to put €150 million into local road networks this year while at the same time depriving them of €160 million by not paying benchmarking.

Considering this, one wonders whether the Minister is living in the real world. Local authorities are at their wits' end trying to keep basic services going, let alone provide extra funding for county roads. In Cork basic hedge cutting, done by the council for years, was suspended last year and will be suspended for the foreseeable future.

The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Ó Cuív, made an announcement about his new CLÁR initiative. He referred to the money he was allocating to CLÁR. It is true that funding was allocated to minor roads in the CLÁR region, but what nobody realised until a few months later was that the same amount of money was withdrawn through the abolition of the tertiary roads grant.

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