Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The United Left Alliance supports the Bill and will vote in favour of it tomorrow evening. The tabling of the Bill by Sinn Féin gives us an opportunity to debate the issues arising from the household and water taxes. That is all it does, however, because it will be voted down by the combined forces of Fine Gael and the Labour Party which shamelessly continue to pursue their savage and unjust austerity policies and their ruinous approach of putting the gambling debts of speculators and bankers on the shoulders of the working class. The fact that the Bill will be defeated raises the question of how ordinary people who are not prepared to accept this new imposition as part of the bailing out of European financial markets and who represent a majority in society can impose their will on the Government. How can this household tax be defeated, if not by a vote in the Dáil? The answer is that it can only be defeated by the mass opposition of ordinary people, expressed through the mass boycott being observed by a majority of households.

The boycott of the home tax and the campaign of mass opposition which is active in every county and uses tactics of peaceful civil disobedience reflect the opinion of the majority. That is why it is regrettable that Deputy Stanley in presenting the Bill referred to the campaign against the household and water taxes, its spokespeople and the Deputies who supported the boycott as engaging in cheap or easy populism. He claims such an approach is irresponsible because we will be unable to pay any of the fines boycotting households risk incurring. I am afraid that is entirely the wrong approach to take. It behoves us to tell the truth that only an active boycott campaign can defeat the tax; otherwise we will be depending on votes in the Dáil. Householders have made the decision to come together in solidarity to organise the boycott. This has been expressed by the tens of thousands who attended mass meetings up and down the country and the fact that, leaving aside those who own multiple houses, the majority of households have refused to register. This is the biggest campaign of civil disobedience in the State since small farmers organised a boycott of land annuities in the 1920s. Those discredited payments where made to former absentee landlords who were not unlike the bondholders and speculators of today who reside in far flung lands while laying their debts on the shoulders of the people. Sinn Féin's leadership should be supporting the many activists in its own ranks who actively support the boycott.

The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government again threatened compliant taxpayers. He scandalously threatened the imposition of huge fines, including one of €2,500 for failure to pay a household tax of €100. What threats have been used against the bankers, speculators and bondholders who crashed the economy? It is disgraceful for the Government to threaten those who are the tax paying backbone of the country with persecution. This tax is a precursor to the so-called property tax which in reality will be a home tax rather than a wealth tax. A report in the Sunday Business Post that Revenue might be given powers to deduct the property tax from wages blows out of the water the Government's fiction that the property or home tax will not be a tax on work. If the Government persists in dragging decent people through the courts, it will face a bitter and widespread war of people power. It should drop this tax forthwith in the interests of justice.

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