Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was selected for one reason and one reason only: because the tax cannot be collected any other way. There will be resistance to the payment of this tax on the very justifiable basis that people cannot pay it. The only way to get money out of people who cannot pay is by extortion. One extorts it quite simply by saying it is going to come out of people's pay, because they cannot pay it any other way, and it will come out of people's social welfare payments, because they cannot pay it any other way. This is an unprecedentedly cruel move against those who will have to make serious sacrifices elsewhere as a result. These are the same people who will lose child benefit, who are in mortgage arrears and who have been hit by the budget in many other ways, yet this tax will be extracted from them at base, at the point at which they cannot make any voluntary decision about whether they can pay it. They cannot resist it.

There will supposedly be what are called deferrals for those in great difficulty. The deferrals are a farce. They are only for individuals with an income of €15,000 or less a year or, in the case of a couple, an income of €25,000 a year - pitiful amounts of money. Those with an income of €16,000 will have to pay this tax. If deferrals are granted in what is a penal measure, people are being told they will have to pay a 4% interest rate on top of the debt they owe, which they cannot afford to pay. What is the point of crucifying the destitute who cannot pay already by saying they will also have to pay a 4% tax on top of that? What will happen is that the Minister will create more debt for people who are already in debt.

It is creating an albatross around the necks of pensioners, who will have to carry it until the day they die. It will force people to sell their houses because they cannot raise the cash to pay this tax also.

This is not a progressive tax but a retrograde one. No one, whatever his or her ideological position, has been fooled by the so-called mansion tax introduced by the Government simply as a sop to the Labour Party to state it was doing something against those who were better off and had larger houses. This does not detract from the fact that the Government is also hitting those on social welfare and middle Ireland again. This is a cross middle Ireland is likely to resist. It will not accept the Government's argument that the IMF and the European Union are the responsible bodies for imposing this tax. It is a voluntary decision by the Government which it did not have to take. There are other sources which it could have taxed or cut.

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