Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

The Minister has pursued the policy of his predecessor who decided not to introduce a carbon tax, the price of which is already apparent with the cost of €135 million for the purchase of carbon credits to be paid for the right to participate in the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme, which will have to be borne by all Irish taxpayers.

In this Bill the Minister has introduced a number of additional powers for the Revenue Commissioners and this is to be welcomed. Especially welcome is the power to create an offence for those seen to be aiding and abetting tax evasion, people who would have talked to bank officials and maybe even bank managers on the question of tax evasion or how various products would help to reduce their tax liability. We know, if anecdotally, that those bank managers and bank officials were operating on orders from above, even if those orders were never written down. It is important, if this provision is enacted, that it is as watertight a provision as it can be. The Minister will have our support if that is the case.

The Minister spoke optimistically about the scale of the Irish economy and the state of the global economy that allows this to happen. It is also in order, however, to put forward certain economic facts about the global economy that could make things change very quickly and the need to be prepared for that. We are, in many respects, a satellite economy of the United States, an economy that has the highest trade deficit and the highest budget deficit in the world. While the dollar has appreciated in recent days based on a commitment given by the new Bush administration to tackle its budget deficit, it seems that as far as American citizens are concerned, that deficit will be tackled in the same old way, by targeting social spending which, unfortunately, we have seen here occasionally. It is likely that the type of dependence and economic impetus by which it is fuelled in terms of our reliance on oil will come back to haunt us, maybe not in the short term but certainly in the medium term. If there is an oil price shock and it affects interest rates, we can all envisage what is likely to happen in an economy that has a gross national product with 12% reliance on property. The Minister has said in the past that that is down to the entrepreneurial initiative of people building property. However, in reality it is about house price inflation and house prices that bear no relation to people's ability to pay or to the economic needs of the country.

When we process this Bill through Committee Stage and Report Stage I hope there will be no rabbits pulled out of hats, as we have seen in respect of other Finance Bills, that would exacerbate that situation. I hope there will be an air of reality and an awareness that if we are to keep our economy on track, we must do so by being aware of the threats that exist within and, more importantly, the very real threats that exist outside.

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