Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Let us make no mistake, this steam-rolled Bill is the moment when thousands of families across the country, already struggling to make ends meet, are pushed over the edge. It is the moment when Fine Gael and Labour put another nail in the coffin of their own credibility, as they betray yet another pre-election promise to the Irish people. It is the moment when the domestic economy is dealt yet another staggering blow as it struggles to its feet. It is simply the moment when the Government introduces the wrong tax at the wrong time. Fianna Fáil is opposed to the introduction of this deeply unfair property tax on the family home. The Government's proposal for a property tax will hit struggling home owners at a time when they can least afford it. Now is simply not the time to inflict an unfair property tax on a struggling economy, weak housing market and home owners working just to keep their families afloat.

It is important also to rubbish the lines peddled by desperate Ministers attempting to avoid responsibility for their decisions. That has been going on all week. The property tax is a political decision by the Government which breaks its pre-election promises. It is not written in stone by the EU-IMF programme of financial support. Our meetings with the troika have clarified that it is only interested in the bottom line of fiscal adjustment, not a rigid set of proposals. The choice to introduce a property tax is being taken by the Government, and no one else, instead of other options at its disposal.

As my colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, said, Fianna Fáil has put forward a fully costed budget proposal based on data from the Department of Finance that does not hammer home owners with a property tax and meets our budget adjustment requirements. The Government has chosen, for example, not to introduce a 3% increase in the universal social charge, USC, for those earning more than €100,000. Instead, it has opted for spin over substance with a "mansion tax" gimmick that has all the depth and research of an idea that somebody in the Labour Party office read about in the Financial Times the weekend before the budget and decided to cut and paste it.

For ordinary families who will find themselves paying an average of €315 on a standard three-bedroom home, all the half-baked plagiarism in the world will not help them balance their already struggling family finances. For them, as my colleague, Deputy Michael McGrath, has alluded to, the only regret they have is that it was not a copy of the Fine Gael manifesto or the Labour manifesto that was available to the Cabinet when they came up with this half-baked idea. Instead, they had a few crumpled copies of the Financial Times, as they scoured for a desperate measure to cover up the clear breach of their promises with a direct tax on the family. The Government decided to hit family homes. It decided not to provide meaningful exemptions for low-income families. It decided not to help the thousands laden down with mortgage arrears. It was the Government, and no one else, that made the decision in that regard.

This is a tax that will be sharply felt across the length and breadth of the country. For example, in my home county of Offaly where property prices are lower than the national average, ordinary families will still be harshly penalised at the worst possible moment for working hard and building up a family home. These are homes that are struggling in the middle of a recession and battling against mortgage arrears. Figures released by the Central Bank yesterday show that almost one in four family home mortgages are either in arrears or have already been restructured. That confirms Fianna Fáil's view that the introduction of a property tax at this time is a major mistake. The reality is that 180,000 mortgage holders are experiencing difficulty in repaying the mortgage on the family home. These people will now be hit by a hefty charge on the same family home. One could ask what is the logic behind introducing a property tax on people already struggling to pay the mortgage. The truth is that a huge number of families will simply not be able to pay the property tax.

Last year, in similar circumstances, the Government rammed the household charge Bill through without proper scrutiny and it quickly descended into a farce. There was the botched implementation of the charge and the failure of the information campaign, the insufficient range of exemptions, and the wide-scale boycotts that had all the hallmarks of a poorly conceived and dreadfully executed charge. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and the Government has once more decided to push a Bill through without giving this House adequate time to scrutinise it. One could ask whether we will once more see the small details coming to the fore and undermining the Government and the Bill. For example, the decision by the Government to impose the property tax on local authority housing goes directly against the advice of the Thornhill report. Even last year's botched household charge had an exemption for social housing. More than 130,000 homes across the country are rented from local authorities, some 1,700 in County Offaly. Those families will see their annual rents hiked up to pay the tax but thousands of local authority homes are already in rent arrears. For instance, Dublin City Council is owed more than €20 million in overdue rents. Those tenants are people whom the State needs to support in order to provide adequate, reliable accommodation at an affordable price. Yet, the Government is hitting them with a rent hike they simply cannot afford. The local authority in question will be left to pick up the bill and in the same way as happened following the household charge fiasco, local services will suffer.

The much hyped financial independence of local authorities that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, has spoken about will be badly damaged by a housing section that becomes an increasingly unsustainable burden on council revenues. Voluntary housing associations, on which the Government has placed great emphasis for the future provision of social housing and to tackle the 100,000 long waiting list, will also be hit by the tax.

It will sap their financial capacity, increase difficulties in respect of rents and limit their capacity to maintain existing stock - not to mention build new houses - into the future. It is a direct contradiction of expressed Government policy to cripple these voluntary housing associations with a tax that will undermine their ability to pursue the goals the Government has set them. In the months and years ahead these flaws will become all too apparent as the contradiction between the Government's housing policy and its property tax comes to the fore.

I have referred to the harsh impact of the tax on ordinary families, those who are struggling with mortgage arrears, people living in social housing and the organisations which help ensure there is adequate provision of housing for those of all needs and means throughout Ireland. There is another group that will be hit by the tax, namely, the elderly. These are the people who spent their working lives building and keeping their family homes. When they started out, they aspired to having a small corner of the world they could call their own, somewhere to settle down and start a family. Through good times and bad, they strove to get the money together to buy homes and toiled away to keep them. They took pride in rearing their children in warm and welcoming homes they worked hard to maintain. Now their working lives are at an end and they are looking forward to the rest and joy of a well deserved retirement. Their children have mostly left the nest to go and start homes of their own which reflect those their parents worked so hard to provide. The incomes of those to whom I refer are fixed and those on private pensions have suffered from the impact of the economic downturn. The property tax is going to have a direct impact on these elderly pensioners who will be punished in the autumn of their years for working hard in order that they might have family homes. The pride they took and the sacrifices they made are now being used against them. They will find themselves punished for the location and size of the homes for which they worked in a different time. The Minister's statement to the effect that they can defer the tax until they pass away means that it is nothing more than a "death" tax for them.

As Deputy Michael McGrath stated, despite the limited time allocated for this debate, we have always believed there is an obligation on the Opposition to put forward meaningful alternatives and offer viable suggestions. Opposition alone is not enough and we are giving the Government the opportunity to at least amend the worst aspects of the Bill. Fianna Fáil is tabling a series of amendments that would alleviate pressure on social housing, those in negative equity or mortgage arrears and families whose homes have been affected by pyrite. We hope this would go some way towards alleviating the impact of the property tax which is the wrong tax at the wrong time.

In recent days some savage measures against the vulnerable have been introduced. In this regard, I refer, in particular, to the budget which is marked by its gross unfairness and mean spiritedness. The property tax is another addition to the ever growing list of broken promises and harmful measures. It is one for which the people of Ireland will pay dearly. We are opposed to the Bill because it imposes the wrong tax at the wrong time. Our amendments offer the opportunity to try to take the worst out of it. However, the question arises as to whether Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies will do at least this much to blunt the blade of this severe tax before it is plunged into the heart of families.

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