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

That would be an outrageous thing to suggest.

Since the Government introduced the hated and unjust household charge, there has been an unprecedented campaign of mass boycott and resistance to this attempt to impose further unjust austerity on ordinary people. Last week even the IMF had to acknowledge the scale of the popular campaign of opposition to the hated household charge and suggest the Government address issues of fairness in its policies. At the weekend even Labour Party backbenchers started to get the jitters when they heard the outrageous suggestion the Government was thinking of circumventing the boycott campaign by taking the successor property tax directly from people's pay packets through the PAYE system. This suggestion blows apart the Government claim that the planned property charge has anything to do with equity or fairness. It is just another tax on workers.

Why does the Taoiseach not admit that the Government's efforts to impose household charges and property taxes on ordinary working people are a shambles? They are not wanted by the people, are unjust and should be completely abandoned.

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