Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It was interesting to listen to the Minister's engagement earlier with Deputy Michael McGrath. The Minister knows very well that Sinn Féin presents its pre-budget submissions every year and they go by the wayside as he does not take the points in them on board. There are many points and the Minister may not agree with all of them but he could, for example, standardise discretionary tax reliefs. I do not know what the Minister is planning to introduce in respect of property tax but I am sure standardising discretionary tax reliefs would bring in more than the figure of €500 million brought in through the property tax mentioned by the Taoiseach. That is one alternative among many others. Hopefully, if the Minister is sincere, he will look at alternatives because this property tax will weigh very heavily on people, particularly those on low and middle incomes, and on the economy.

I know the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government commissioned the report. It was believed that it would be under his remit before he made a mess of the previous tax. Will the Minister publish the advice of the expert group before he introduces this tax? The President of the European Parliament spoke here earlier and we talked about the importance of the role of national parliaments and the European Parliament. If the Minister wants a real engagement on budgetary policies, he should publish the advice he has been getting from the Department. He should not allow it to come out a year after the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government introduced the household tax and we then see that advice was given to the Department that there would be major issues in terms of collection and enforceability. He should publish the advice so that we can have a proper, robust debate because nobody in this Chamber wants to put forward proposals that do not stack up and cannot be robustly defended. The Minister has the benefit of having that advice so will he publish the expert group's proposals and views in respect of the property tax, and any analysis that will have been done within the Department on the impact on the domestic economy and low and middle-income earners?

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