Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

This proposal was never debated in the House. It was brought in by way of a Report Stage amendment to the NAMA legislation. It was guillotined in such a way that the House never got an opportunity to debate it in any shape or form. Deputy Ring and others should have had an opportunity to debate this penal rate of tax. It was done on the understanding that nothing would be affected by the tax, that there would be no more development and so this was a fanciful tax as nobody was going to rezone land. The place was awash with rezoned land, so it was designed as a token to say that we are going to shut the door and lock it with 80 locks so that it will never be opened again.

This provision was never debated in the House. People like Deputy Ring would have known of specific cases that should have been contemplated before the House decided on this, but they were not given that opportunity. It is very unfair that the Minister puts up a stone wall and states we cannot consider it.

The consequences of this tax were not thought through. There was no assessment done in the Department of Finance before it arrived on the statute books. It was never debated in the Dáil. We read criticism today about parliamentary accountability having disappeared, and the highest constitutionally independent officer in the land, the Ombudsman, has told us that we need to get our act together. This is a case in point. It is ridiculous to expect people to live with the consequences of a tax that was dreamed up by a handful of people in a particular party who wanted a token green fig leaf to cover their nakedness in respect of decisions being made on other matters, namely, NAMA. However, other people have to live with the consequences of this fig leaf. We need a proper system of enacting legislation. It cannot be done on a whim and without scrutiny.

Perhaps the 80% windfall tax is a good thing but I cannot think of an activity that necessitated an 80% tax, unless those who propose it want to ban that activity. I do not know where this came from because we were never exposed to the thinking of the Green Party, who no doubt advocated it. It would be nice if some of its members were here to respond to Deputy Ring, because we have seen what could be the first of many consequences of an ill-thought out tax. We have learned the lesson so often that we, as the saying goes, "marry in haste, repent at leisure", when Bills were jackbooted through the House only to be later found unworkable.

This provision should never have passed through the House without scrutiny and there should have been an opportunity for people like Deputy Ring or Lord Altamont to have a case heard by the Oireachtas before decisions were made. The Minister now feels obliged to cling to the wreckage of this idea because she does not have a mandate from the Cabinet to change it. We should find some way of dealing with the fallout - be it through a special provision, regulation or otherwise - from such an extraordinary tax and the way it was conceived and delivered.

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