Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

Two different items in this group of resolutions trouble me. One is the increase in DIRT. No exemption is provided. Most people lodge their savings after tax. What they earn on those savings is not a gift from the Government — it is not a gift from anyone — it is interest made on the basis that a bank has the use of one's money while it is on deposit. One pays tax before the money is deposited. The Government does not add anything to it while it is in the bank and when it comes back out the Government taxes it again, in this instance at 23%. That is outrageous. We are talking about small savers here. Given the recent and current turmoil with the banks, surely we should try to impress on people the need to be responsible with their money? We should be trying to impress on people that one cannot have instant credit for everything and that one should save and make provision for one's needs. This measure will not do that because people simply will not see the benefit of saving.

The notion that one would try to drive people away from using cheque books to using credit cards is beyond me, especially in the current climate. When one writes a cheque and hands it over to someone, it is almost a written statement that one has sufficient money in one's account to cover the cheque. It is a statement of responsibility in regard to finances. Any one of us could walk out the door to find a queue at a bank ATM. It is not called painless money for nothing. One sticks a card into a machine and the money comes out. The transaction is painless. That level of non-thinking withdrawal of cash is now being discouraged. In most countries in Europe it is an offence to write a cheque when one knows one does not have the means to cover it. If one does so in France, for instance, it is illegal to write another cheque for at least 12 months until one becomes responsible for one's deposit account. Surely that is the type of responsibility we need to encourage or is this another measure to ensure banks need not do the paper work they should have been doing all along? It is outrageous that such measures are being introduced which encourage people not to be responsible with their financial affairs.

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