Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)

Deputy Cowley has also spearheaded the campaign for a helicopter emergency medical service for this country for several years. As an experienced rural GP he knows of too many families robbed of their loved ones owing to the lack of such a service which is available in every other country in Europe. Deputy Cowley began speaking of the need for a helicopter emergency medical service when Deputy Noonan was Minister for Health and has continued to do so up to the present day. He travelled to Northern Ireland to meet the then Minister for Health there, Ms Bairbre de Brún, and the North-South emergency care body set up under the Good Friday Agreement.

The Government still uses helicopters for emergency missions which are not dedicated to the cause. This means that the aircraft are not always available when needed and the equipment they carry is insufficient because of the multi-purpose role the helicopters perform. As a result, people die because they do not receive specialised treatment in time. People will continue to die after today's budget because the Government has once again ignored the need to provide money for a helicopter emergency medical service.

Independent Members address the real and important issues that big business, big political parties and the Government choose to ignore. The case of the Rossport five is a good example where people saw how an independent TD in Mayo, Deputy Cowley, stood up fearlessly for those people's rights to stay at home while other Mayo TDs said nothing, colluded with Government, played games like the hypocrites they are and only pretended to support them. Independent Members are the people's best advocates.

I welcome the fact that the reference in the Budget Statement to the artists' tax exemption does not amount to a major attack on artists. The figure given by the Minister today was €250,000 per annum but let us look at the real world of the artist in Ireland in 2005. In their support, I will highlight some simple facts about the exemption. Most Irish artists are still poor. Of the 1,300 artists who benefited in 2001, more than 50% earned less than €10,000 and the average income for 87% of them was below €11,000, less than the average industrial wage. Artists pay tax. The exemption applies strictly to an artist's creative earnings, so a job an artist takes to make ends meet is fully taxed. So too are performance and merchandise earnings and the earnings of musical artists, whose only exempt earnings are those from composing their work.

Artists are in no way unique in getting an exemption on one stream of income. Numerous tax incentive schemes exist in Ireland. Of the tax forgone by the State under all tax relief schemes, the artists' tax exemption accounts for just 0.38% of the total. High earning artists still pay a great deal of tax. The few big earners pay full tax on their non-creative earnings. Typically these earnings are at least twice the amount they get tax-free. The artists' tax exemption keeps them in this country and ensures they pay tax in Ireland rather than anywhere else. The value of the artists' tax exemption to Ireland is immense. It has been in place for 36 years, is simple to administer and has been incredibly successful. A state that does not look after its artists is a state without a soul.

Many people think the Government is spending money wisely, but some statistics paint a different picture. A project in my constituency, the Dublin Port tunnel is €200 million over budget so far and might go up to €400 million or €500 million in the next few days. The Government squandered €52 million on electronic voting and spent €30 million on a farm that was valued at €4 million. The Battle of the Boyne site, which could have been bought for €2.7 million, was bought instead by a private business and then sold to the Office of Public Works 18 months later for €7.8 million.

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