Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 11, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following:

"PART 1

COMMISSION ON TAXATION

1.—The Minister shall in establishing the commission on taxation include in its terms of reference the following matters:

(a) to examine anomalies arising from the tax treatment of married persons where one spouse remains out of paid employment in order to attend to child care duties;

(b) to examine the treatment of unmarried persons living together including gay couples in long term relationships;

(c) to examine the operation and possible reform of stamp duty particularly the capacity of property developers to avoid stamp duty on certain transactions and the exclusion of certain financial transactions (e.g. contracts for difference) from the lower rate of stamp duty applied to financial transactions;

(d) to examine the need to ensure that carbon tax proposals have due regard to the ability of less well off individuals including pensioners to meet the cost arising from increased taxation on carbon based fuels such as coal and gas;

(e) to inquire into the fairness and equity of the overall tax system and to provide for the evaluation of tax breaks and other provisions permitting tax payers to mitigate their tax liabilities and the impact in particular of provisions for exemption from tax and residency rules and shall publish at regular intervals the outcome of their enquiries into the tax system.".

The purpose of this amendment is to ask the Minister to use the Commission on Taxation, which was a proposal put forward by the Labour Party, as a way of having an ongoing look at our tax system and its fairness or unfairness. This is a job that needs to be done on a continual basis, regardless of who is in Government, because what is effective in tax terms in one set of years is not effective some time later. Therefore, this needs to be continuously monitored.

One of the issues the Commission on Taxation should address is evaluating tax breaks. This follows the study done by the Minister's Department some years ago showing that many of the construction-based tax breaks — to use the language of a number of the reports — carried dead weight in terms of economic activity. In other words, the economic activity would have happened anyway and the tax breaks did not add anything extra. However, the political impact of the tax breaks, particularly for the Minister's party, has brought huge rewards, even though all the parties in the House have been party to tax rates being lowered. In the case of the Labour Party, the 12.5% corporation tax was agreed by then Minister for Finance, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, and subsequently implemented by the follow-on Fianna Fáil Administration and Minister for Finance. There was cross-party agreement in the House on this matter.

The Minister announced his Commission on Taxation which is weighed down with the great and the good of the tax world, so many people who are leading lights in the tax avoidance tax minimisation industry, as opposed to one or two persons personally appointed, in one instance with a trade union connection, are to be advocates for ordinary taxpayers. The only parallel in history that comes to mind is Dick Cheney's energy commission. It was set up to protect the environment, but it was loaded down with lobbyists and vested interests who basically wanted to get their hands on the US energy reserves. The Minister's approach is very much like Vice President Cheney's approach; the fox is going to raid the henhouse and the foxes are asked to sit on the committee. This is wrong. The Labour Party had in mind a broader commission which would examine what we are doing.

Since the catastrophic fall in tax revenues under the Minister's watch, this issue has become more important than ever. We are going to have less of the kind of tax revenues that were available to blow on any and every other fancy rather than to invest in serious infrastructure which this country requires. We also have an ideological rift running through this Government with the diminishing presence of the Progressive Democrats over the past ten years. This has been to privatise health care at all costs.

I was saddened to read the Minister's proposal on the hospice movement. When I was a teenager, my mother died very slowly and painfully from a very severe form of cancer. There was no hospice movement available at that time to help people like her who did not have money. Twenty years later, when her unmarried older brother was dying with lung cancer, the availability of hospice services had improved and he was able to access such services as a single man, which included male nurses to attend him when he was in his late 80s.

The hospice movement in this country is more than worthy of Government attention, investment and assistance, and this would have my strong support. If the Minister were to propose in the Finance Bill that for every euro the not-for-profit hospice movement raised, the Government would match it by VAT refund — which is the subject of a Labour Party amendment — we would applaud such a proposal because there is no dispute about the fact that the hospice movement has brought a dimension to palliative care in this country which is simply not available in the normal hospital services. The Minister is proposing to complete the circle of privatising our health services by essentially privatising and offering a for-profit investor-led service.

I draw the Minister's attention to four pages of amendments all to do with the investor in palliative care. I understand the technical reasons for the Minister's amendment referring to investors. However, what is the advantage to society of privatising the hospice movement? A developer wishing to invest in hospices will get a 41% tax break for every €1 million used to build a hospice. Over a period of 15 years, a developer will receive at least €410,000 back if he or she is a top rate taxpayer and a bit more if he or she also has a PRSI liability. What is the point of this proposal?

The Minister already privatised and attempted to introduce tax breaks for private hospitals, nursing home care and psychiatric facilities last year. His predecessor as Minister, Mr. Charlie McCreevy, with whom I debated the issue, had a crude view that it would produce more beds. This is an argument that has to be addressed. What has it done to the health services as a whole? Why are we listening, day after day, to so many tragic stories? What does it say about a country when the Government proposes privatising people in their last stages of illness? What does this say about this country as we march on to 2016? If the Minister wished to incentivise the development of hospices there were better ways of doing so, which the Labour Party would have supported on a euro for euro basis, rather than yet again giving tax breaks for investors.

I tabled this amendment which speaks for itself. It asks the Minister to evaluate those tax breaks. It is not too late for the Minister to defer his proposal. I suggest he ask the commission, weighted and all as it is by people who have been involved in one or other element of the taxation advisory industry, to undertake that evaluation. In most other parliaments, anyone being appointed to a commission would be subject to scrutiny by a parliamentary committee such as the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, of which my colleague, Deputy Mansergh, is Vice Chairman. One of the questions such an appointee would be asked is whether he or she had a vested interest. Who are the vested interests that are the predominant force on this committee? They are the people in the taxation advisory industry.

I do not have a problem with the taxation advisory industry. I am originally an accountant by profession. However, we must try to define what is in the broader public interest rather than what is in the direct interest of a select few. This is what the Cheney commission did in America in the early 2000s with regard to energy policy and developing areas such as Alaska. The Cheney commission has not been successful and I do not really expect this Commission on Taxation to be particularly successful. It is headed by somebody for whom I have a lot of time, the retiring chairman of the Revenue Commissioners. He is just one person on the commission, with one or two others who might represent the interests of ordinary taxpayers.

I refer to the impact of individualisation on families, particularly families with two or more children. They are now paying extra taxes of approximately €7,000 a year if one partner chooses to stay at home and mind the children. I will not rehearse the various points I made on Committee Stage.

The commission should provide an opportunity to examine the treatment of unmarried persons who are living together, including gay couples in long-term relationships. The Labour Party has published a Bill on civil unions, which has been put before the House twice. The programme for Government promises to legislate for civil unions as a prelude to giving gay people the full entitlements others get in terms of recognition of their relationships. There are big tax issues that need a cool examination to ascertain how we can give people their just entitlements, which is what a proper tax system ought to be about.

We want to consider the reform of stamp duty. The Minister's two attempts, which were too little and too late, to change stamp duty more than anything else wrecked the housing market. There it is going to sit probably for at least another two years. We all wanted a soft landing. For political reasons prior to the general election the Minister chose to boost the housing and land market to unsustainable norms. We could have had the soft landing. However, unfortunately once the general election was over and reform of stamp duty had to come, the Minister took two bites at the cherry, despite having said when Fine Gael made a proposal that if it was done piecemeal it would be a disaster. The two bites at the cherry on stamp duty reform really damaged the housing market.

See this speech in context