Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I am sometimes unable to tell whether Deputy Mansergh is spoofing. He said that he struggles to understand how people can suffer a penalty when they give up a job. However, consider a person who leaves a job paying €30,000, which is close to the average industrial wage, because he or she faces annual child care costs of €20,000. Such people will find that they have not only lost their salary of €30,000 but that their spouse has lost the advantage of their PAYE tax credit, worth €1,830, and that the proportion of the latter's band which is taxed at 20% has dropped by €26,000. That is the penalty. I am sure Deputy Mansergh knows this but is being obtuse.

The Minister says it was not part of his priorities to make these changes in one go. I question the basis upon which he sets his priorities. He seemed to suggest that the change we propose would in some way conflict with his desire to concentrate relief at the low end. The reality, however, is that this is a flat rate tax credit and is just as much a relief concentrated at the low end as are the personal tax rate changes on which he has chosen to concentrate. Moreover, it is targeted and not available to every couple. Deputy Barrett, for example, would not be a beneficiary because he does not have children in the eligible category, unless his spouse were caring for someone who is incapacitated.

Is it not a supreme irony that the Minister for Finance is willing to say to someone who is incapacitated that he or she will be allowed tax relief up to €50,000 if a carer is brought in from outside the home but will not even receive the PAYE credit of €1,830 if his or her carer is a member of the household? It requires some extraordinarily convoluted thinking to arrive at that type of attitude to people who care for incapacitated family members in their own home. Moreover, only a tiny fraction of carers qualify for the carer's allowance.

I do not accept the Minister's view that this amendment somehow seeks to turn back the entire individualisation clock. That would not be the consequence of this proposal.

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