Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Finance Bill. I congratulate my constituency colleague, the Minister, Deputy Cowen, on bringing this successful Finance Bill to the House — he became Minister for Finance more than a year ago.

It is important to reiterate the main features in the Bill. Most of them which were announced on budget day before Christmas have been forgotten with the passage of time. It is important to reiterate that the Finance Bill will remove all those on the minimum wage from the income tax net and that it will exclude workers on the average industrial wage from the higher tax rate. It will confirm the restrictions on the use of tax relief by high income taxpayers to secure greater equity in the tax system. If I was asked what the Finance Bill was all about, I would say it was about equity.

Anomalies have shown up as a result of the major reviews and reports carried out by, and on behalf of, the Minister for Finance in the past year. Once he received the relevant information he moved immediately to introduce restrictions to ensure everybody paid a fair level of tax in view of their income and the services they obtained in the State.

We are phasing out a number of other tax reliefs and exemptions. In addition, we are continuing the stamp duty exemption for young trained farmers for a further three years, have increased the tax exemption limits for income from farm leasing for over five years and are extending certain reliefs to cover the EU single farm payment entitlement in appropriate circumstances.

For the first time ever the Bill will introduce a new scheme of tax relief for heritage properties donated to the proposed Irish Heritage Trust. The new body will have an important task ahead of it. I wish it every success when it gets up and running.

The Bill will introduce a new initiative aimed at encouraging low income earners who hold SSIA accounts to transfer funds to pension schemes. The Minister referred to the Opposition's reaction to SSIAs when first introduced. They said they were a disgrace and should be cancelled. They said there was no place for them and that they were for the well-off and so on. We now know that many low income earners, even people not in the income tax net, were careful with how they saved their money and will be getting their just rewards when the accounts reach maturity in the months ahead.

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