Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Rabbitte for upsetting his usual family and social occasion on Saturday night by staying in to watch me on television. I appreciate that greatly. I read a few weeks ago that one of his undercover agents had discovered that Fianna Fáil was about to cut the tax rate to 18% and that is why Deputy Rabbitte changed the habit of a lifetime from his old days with the Workers' Party and Democratic Left and all his other parties, to go for a new agenda and to propose tax reform.

We declared that, If the economy remains strong, we will cut taxes. As we have done for 20 years, we will continue to reform the taxation system and reduce tax rates, as we have done. We have introduced every single tax reduction, bar the 1% reduction which Deputy Quinn achieved when he was Minister for Finance. We will continue to reduce the higher rate of tax to 40% and we will complete the reform of PRSI by abolishing the ceiling whereby no PRSI is paid on incomes over €49,000. We will halve the full rate of PRSI from 4% to 2%, we will cut the self-employed PRSI rate and will double the home care tax credit. As the Tánaiste stated on a previous occasion, based on his analysis of the number of gardaí needed, we will increase the number. Now that Deputy Rabbitte has changed his long-held view on these issues I would have thought he would be more supportive of our policies. I assure the Deputy these policies work. He used to believe——

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