Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)

I will share time with Deputy John Lyons.

I welcome this pro-jobs Bill, which includes a host of smart measures that will make Ireland stand out against its competitors and give us an advantage over those with whom we go head to head in foreign investment terms. If this legislation and the Government's very welcome jobs plan announced earlier in the week are about reorienting the country and refocusing the economy on entrepreneurial activity, the next budget should be about broadening the burden of recovery and growth. It would, however, be wrong and ill-conceived at this sensitive time in our recovery to excessively tax work.

That the Government previously restored the national minimum wage to a decent rate and moved in this Bill to take 330,000 working people out of the clutches of the universal social charge is a fair reflection of the wide view in the Government that we need to ensure we have a floor of decency beneath which no one will be allowed to fall. Work should be rewarded and encouraged rather than disincentivised.

The Bill introduces about €1 billion in new tax measures. All the evidence suggests there is likely to be an increase in the tax take from €36 billion in 2012 to more than €43 billion in 2015. However, based on these figures, it is anticipated that taxation as a percentage of GDP will remain fairly constant, at around 35% of gross domestic product. In any person's language, these figures show that taxation is low by international standards and likely to remain low. However, what the figures also indicate is that there is room to make our taxation system fairer and more progressive. Morally and ethically, those who have the most should make the largest contribution. Key public services, namely, our schools, colleges, hospitals and the Garda Síochána, do not run themselves.

It amuses and confuses me in equal measure when I hear some Deputies, including Government Deputies, challenging Ministers, as has been the case in recent weeks, for example, about adjustments being made to community employment schemes, as if the tough decisions taken across Departments are being made in a politically and fiscally neutral environment. It is trite to decry the types of changes we have had to preside over this year, while simply refusing in some instances to countenance any bold or meaningful changes that could impinge on the assets or vast taxpayer subsidised reliefs enjoyed by the very well-off who, the last time I looked, were doing a good job fending for themselves. We can and should ask more of those who have most to give more. The Government needs to grapple with this question as part of our fairness and recovery agenda.

I accept that the Minister for Finance decided to leave income tax alone this year. He did so for good reason as there is a strong and compelling case for taking such a decision at this highly sensitive time in our recovery, particularly in respect of those who are on low and middle incomes. The last thing the Irish main street needs is an assault on the modest pay packets of some of our less well-off citizens. However, we are fast approaching the stage at which we will have to devise new ways of raising revenue which require the better-off to play a much greater role in our recovery. For example, further progressive changes to capital taxation rates and exemptions could yield several hundred million euro for the Exchequer. Changes to a standard rating of pension tax breaks could raise more than €400 million, while other reforms of pension tax law which were alluded to by many interest groups in advance of the budget also have the potential to raise several hundred million euro.

In these times, more than ever, boldness and imagination are required to help get the country on the right road. None of us can say on the one hand let us protect the services on which we all depend and on the other refuse to engage in the notion that there is a better and fairer way of raising the money to do the things we all want to see happen. We need to have an honest and reasoned debate on where the heavy lifting should be done and on whose shoulders it is most appropriate to place that responsibility.

We have long since moved past the stage where the budget announcements should be protected like the third secret of Fatima. It is incumbent on us, as an open, transforming and reforming Government, to facilitate a genuine national debate on our economic direction and what sort of society we want to see emerge from the mess we inherited from the previous Government.

Presenting the budget here in this House as a fait accompli and all the set pieces from Government and, in some cases, the staged outrage from the Opposition, that goes with the annual budget carnival is an anachronism and belongs in the past.

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