Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I, too, acknowledge the work of Deputy Eoghan Murphy on this Bill and the role of the Chief Whip and the Minister in allowing us to discuss it today. The Friday sittings are very healthy for those of us on the backbenches in that we are able to bring forward Bills like this one. The overriding point about this Bill is transparency, which must be welcomed in that we need to get more information into the public domain.

Looking at the possible negative aspects to the Bill, I am mindful that people can use statistics and twist them. This week a constituent telephoned me to say the household did not want to pay the household charge and pointed out that they had paid a levy of €15,000 to the local authority a couple of years ago, of which a couple of thousand of euro was to be used for recreational facilities. They did not have a playground in their front garden and, therefore, felt they should not have to pay for anything else. I pointed out that the local authority swimming pool in Naas, to which some of this levy money had gone, had cost €1 million. People can twist things to suit themselves.

Deputy Hannigan touched on this, when he said it was important ti show people how their money is spent and how it impacts on their lives. We are all a little bit self-centred and selfish at times and we like to see what we are getting for taxpayers' money. That is where the benefit of this Bill lies. It touches on the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government's reform of local government, which was recently announced. I look forward to a situation down the line where a good proportion of the property tax raised locally is spent locally. It will lead to greater accountability. I warned some of my local councillors that it will probably put them under more pressure because they will be more accountable. Where local authorities are seen to be wasting money, people will rightly hammer them for it because they will say it is their money. That is not the case at present. Since the abolition of rates, the Central Fund is the largest source of funding for local authorities. Locals see that as money from Dublin and do not feel it is taxpayers' money. They do not see the link. The nub of what Deputy Murphy proposes in this Bill is about making those links. It is not only about compliance, as Deputy Harris said, it is about where this cake come from.

That leads me to an area of our economy which has probably grown a little during the recession, namely, the black market. A neighbour of mine told me she wanted to do a little bit of work on her house. Each tradesman asked for a bit of cash in hand, however she wanted to be able to do the work through the books but she was finding it difficult to get somebody who would do it all through the books. We hear anecdotal evidence that this is a difficulty. One can understand why people want to get the cheapest price but the State is losing out by the growth in the black market. A real challenge for us as a Government is to make it socially unacceptable for people to say they will do a job cash in hand because our services will lose out as a result.

People will always make excuses as to why they should not pay tax. If one asks someone who is involved in tax avoidance why he or she is not paying tax, he or she will say that money is only going to bail out the bondholders or pay for the banks. He or she would never mention that some of that money goes to pay special needs assistants in schools, to build new schools, to pay gardaí and to fund our health care system. We must make those links. The spirit of this Bill is very much about making these links and saying the money one hates to see leaving one's pay packet each week is going to something which impacts on one's life and the lives of those around one, whether elderly relatives who are old age pensioners and who use services of the State or otherwise.

What drives people mad when paying their taxes is if they feel there is not value for money. There have been many examples in recent times when the taxpayer has not secured good value for money. To go back to the reform of local government, if money is collected locally, there will be greater accountability among council officials and they will have to deliver greater value for money. We cannot have a situation in the future where Departments waste money. The e-voting machines cost €50 million. Seeing such waste drives people mad with anger, especially as they do not feel a sense of ownership of large amounts of money. When one thinks about how hard people work to raise this money, the value on it is huge.

Greater accountability in tackling waste in spending is coupled with this.

In general, any measure that makes people more aware of where their money goes is welcome, because there is a disconnect with politics in many respects. Sometimes people will ask: "Why am I paying that tax to you?", as if Members of this House just get it and keep it. We must make people aware of the challenges that Ministers face on a daily basis. There is a need to explain. As I regularly say to my constituents, if we leave aside the bank debt, the huge problems we have with that and the mistakes that were made in the past, this country's primary difficulty is the deficit. One would not run a household in the way this country has been run for a number of years. We are spending more than our income, and the Government would be totally irresponsible if it did not tackle that deficit and try to close the gap as quickly as possible. Otherwise, future generations will pay for us continuing to borrow to fund basic services.

We must make people aware of the challenge the Government faces every day in trying to do the right thing for the country and getting it back on its feet, and the key role the people play in that. In that regard, I commend the Bill to the House and Deputy Murphy for his work on it.

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