Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I object to the fact that the Minister has brought forward a series of quite complex amendments for Report Stage and we will be unable to discuss many of them. I take a fair amount of interest in the details of the tax code. I contacted the Minister's office to ask for some commentary or explanatory summary on the Report Stage amendments which the Minister is putting forward but I did not receive a response. The drawing up of technical tax amendments to the Finance Bill is quite a specialised job. The House will have at most approximately three to three and a half hours to debate the Bill on Report Stage. When the Minister produced the original schedule, the Report Stage debate was to be spread over two days but it has been reduced to one evening, to finish by 11 p.m. Many of the amendments will not be reached and will not be the subject of discussion.

The Minister earned a lot of kudos recently for offering to close down various tax shelters for very wealthy people but this Bill will open up new tax shelters such as those to do with mental care centres and psychiatric hospitals. There has been no opportunity for the House to debate these issues. The Minister has tabled some very complex amendments dealing with heritage properties. His amendments seek to extend a number of qualifying dates from the date of the Finance Bill and from earlier in the year up to today's date and up to a date in February. The House has not been informed of the reason for these dates. Are they to allow a few other people on the tax avoidance road to slip in under the net? These may be perfectly justifiable but given the track record of the Government in slipping measures into the Finance Bill on Report Stage, I fear the worst.

The Labour Party is objecting to the Finance Bill being dealt with in such a fashion. It is unfair to the House and unfair to the standard which the Minister purported to set for himself when he succeeded the then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, that at least he was going to do things a little differently. It is the same old story and we do not even have an accompanying memorandum.

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