John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

-----and because it is a common sense policy which is now being adopted in many key Western economies. We will work to ensure that it is fairly applied. The proceeds will be ring-fenced to ensure that it does not add to fuel poverty and that energy-efficient projects are promoted. As set out in the programme for Government, we need to move to a site-value-based taxation system for land, which will provide a fair long-term tax base and encourage sustainable economic activity. We must learn the lesson the collapse of our transaction-based taxation system is teaching us.

I admitted at the outset that the Government had struggled to make sense of our current predicament.

See this speech in context