Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Maybe they were doing that. The credibility of politics in Ireland has suffered greatly. Everybody knows sacrifices are required but that young family man on the doorstep is reeling from the €350 he has lost this month and wants to know - and it is a reasonable question - what is the story on such taxes.

The Minister has said he will either tax, means test or reduce child benefit. That is probably more of a woman's argument in the sense of women being the majority of the caring parents to whom child benefit is paid, but it is a vital element of a large number of family budgets in the middle income range. I heard the Minister's colleague, Deputy Kelleher say he has three small children, some of them qualified to get the early child care supplement, and he felt as a Dáil Deputy he should not be getting it. I do not know whether he discussed it with his wife or partner. Women in Ireland feel very strongly about this.

Children are not recognised in the tax code. In the 1950s and 1960s children were recognised in the tax code and men, who were the major people in employment then got tax allowances for children. The switch to child benefit meant it was paid to the caring parent in the home, and in those days that was almost always the mother. The Government is talking about changing that system fundamentally but not, apparently, recognising that a single person's income supports one person while the income of a married person with three children may support five individuals, or if both parents work their two incomes may support five people.

In the general, universal principles of tax fairness, one has to take into account the core number of people supported by whatever income is available to the taxpayer or married taxpayers, if one is talking about a couple. That is why we need to see the papers on child benefit. Otherwise this report will come out and the great and good and the commentariat will tell us what we will do. Meanwhile ordinary people are becoming more and more nervous because they have to organise their affairs. Do they have the finances to undertake a holiday this summer or to do up the house or kitchen? They have really hard decisions to make and unless the Commission on Taxation publishes some of the papers so we get some of the information we are not in a position as a society to make a judgment.

Maybe the Minister proposes to bring the overall marginal rates of tax down and transfer some of those marginal rates into property taxes, but I fear it will be very difficult to keep increasing the marginal rates. People in the public sector on average also lost 5% to 7% after tax. For public sector people, as a payment for recognising their pension contribution, their marginal rate after the last two budgets is up around the 58% to 59% mark. The Minister has explained to us the mess Fianna Fáil got the country into and how the country has to pay to get Fianna Fáil out of the mess.

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