Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I am glad to have this opportunity to deal with the bogus statistic that Fine Gael has been parroting for some time. It takes the total tax take, divides it by the number of households and then states that the burden of taxation has increased, which is nonsense. Every individual in the tax system has paid less tax in terms of average tax taken on income after this and previous budgets. Nobody in the tax system has lost out in this regard. Fine Gael's suggestion that everyone loses out flies in the face of reality.

Corporation, businesses and excise taxes, VAT, stamp duty and capital gains tax have all increased due to the level of economic activity. When one examines the components of growth, one can see that domestic demand has increased. A total of 90,000 more people are working, of which 71,000 hold full-time jobs. One would expect Fine Gael to welcome such a development. This is the litmus test of the success of our policies. If, on the basis of a total tax take of €36,000 million or €37,000 million, one's projections are off target by 2%, it is a relatively large figure. I will happily accept criticism from the Opposition over the fact that our economy is so successful that we have record numbers of people at work and more people providing greater tax revenues for the Exchequer, on the basis of a reduced average tax take for workers.

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