Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Additional revenue affords us the opportunity to return some of this to those who earn it. The Government has radically restructured the tax system in the past eight years to ensure that much more income tax relief goes to the lower paid. As a result, more than one third of the workforce is completely outside the tax net in 2005. That represents 720,000 earners compared to 380,000 in 1997.

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