Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We learned this morning that the Government has agreed to legislate to facilitate banks in repossessing family homes. Yet, the 170,000 people in mortgage arrears and those whose homes are about to be repossessed will be still forced to pay the family home tax. The family home tax, or property tax, Bill was published yesterday and is being taken on Friday and rushed through the House, with a vote on Friday. The Thornhill report was published only on Thursday, although it had been with the Government since June. There will be no adequate time for discussion or debate, with very substantial powers going to Revenue in terms of entering homes, inspecting properties and so forth.

All of this is to ram through the House what is essentially a very unfair tax because absent from the tax and the legislation is a fundamental canon of any taxation law, which is the ability to pay. In society today, at this very moment, many people simply do not have the ability to pay this tax - we are talking about the unemployed, people on welfare payments, pensioners, people on family income supplement, the lowest paid workers and people on farm assist. They do not have the capacity to pay the level of property tax that is being put on them by this budget and by the Government.

We must remember that some 500,000 people are living in households where mortgages are in arrears. Yet, for some unknown reason, they are expected and asked to pay a significant family home tax, all in the context of a dead property market.

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