Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

I refer to the amendments in my name that have not been ruled out of order. This is an act of political codology. A number of speakers referred to the truncation of this Bill and the inadequate time allocated to it. In reality, the party finance spokespersons have facilitated this Bill in truncated form. None of the arguments I have heard were raised at the meeting with the Minister for Finance.

We must be honest. It is extremely unlikely any of the amendments tabled will be accepted. We are trying to make our position again and again to the Minister and pointing out that when this blows up in the Government's face, the record will show that we believed this to be a damaging Finance Bill for the people of the country. It will not get us out of the economic difficulties we are in.

Amendment No. 4 deals with the bankers' bonuses and it is important that we deal with it. When the budget resolutions were passed in December 2010, what priority did the Minister for Finance give to his officials? Did he tell them that bankers' bonuses were an issue? I have already pledged to introduce a scheme to tax bankers' bonuses at 90%. Did the Minister tell his officials to prioritise bankers' bonuses in view of the fact that a couple of months remained to get the Bill through? Did he tell them to prioritise the universal social charge, which takes people earning as little as €80 into the tax net?

I listened to members of Fine Gael say yesterday that they would accept the universal social charge if the threshold was increased by €1,000, which would mean people earning less than €100 would come under the application of the universal social charge.

The first amendment deals with the economic impact assessment-----

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