Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I would like to know a little more about this resolution. Turning property into a commodity for speculation, trade and profiteering is the reason we are in the mess we are in now. Property-based tax reliefs particularly directed at developers fuelled the property bubble that has crashed our economy. I find it worrying that the Government's approach to trying to restart economic activity in our economy, which we all want to see, is based on further tax reliefs specifically for commercial property. I wonder about that. The €64 million estimated cost involved is a good deal of money that we are giving away. I would like to hear the case as to why that €64 million might not have been used to mitigate some of the nasty measures the Government has inflicted on lone parents and other vulnerable sectors of society who have been hit and on measures such as the reduction in the fuel allowance season.

I do not know whether I should vote for or against this resolution but I am suspicious of it, given the history of such reliefs and the quantity of money involved. I ask the Minister to give us a convincing reason this is not just another property relief, albeit maybe of a smaller scale, of the sort that got us into the mess we are in.

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