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

I will be brief. As with many of the measures that are being introduced in the budget, and in the previous budget, the Taoiseach will try to provide a specific justification or rationale for particular tax increases. He will try to make them sound more palatable when in reality they are just further overwhelmingly regressive austerity measures that are being imposed on ordinary families. Families do not have different pots of money which are somehow separate and unconnected: one for cars, one for farm vehicles, another one for property taxes or cigarettes and a pint of beer at the weekend. They all come out of the same pot. All of the increases will disproportionately and regressively affect those who have the least. That is the reality of all such measures. Their combined effect will be to impoverish people who already have very little.

Those particular measures will disproportionately affect families, as so many others have. The more children one has, the harder one will be hit in a range of ways. The motor taxation measures are no exception in that regard. One will be punished just because one has more children and have to have a larger car to transport them. Just in case it would encourage people to use alternative forms of transport such as public transport, let us not forget that a significant number of people do not have public transport. Cuts have been made to existing public transport and there have been increases in bus and rail fares of between 14% and 19%.

People are being hit from the left, the right and the centre but all of the extra money must come out of the same pot. The increases are a slap in the face for people who bought vehicles with low emissions not just this year, but last year. The attempt to say the increases are stepped and that there are still incentives is all mar dhea. The Government has slapped in the face those who made an investment to try to comply with measures to encourage reduced CO2 emissions. We will oppose the resolutions.

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