Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the speech of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, this morning and I thought it was interesting how he contradicted himself. Someone put it down on paper but no one seems to have spotted that he contradicted himself. He said:

The introduction of a property tax has been a condition of the programme since it was first negotiated in November 2010, under the previous Fianna Fáil Government. It has remained a condition of the programme following subsequent reviews which are agreed by all programme partners.

He did not wait for a couple of pages before contradicting himself. He contradicted himself in the next paragraph. He continued: "It is true that the Government has some scope within the programme to use alternative methods to achieve programme targets." How can it have scope if it has no choice and there is a condition? To say there is scope to use alternative methods suggests it could do something else. The Government has not admitted that it could do something different but at the same time maintains it cannot because it would affect people in other ways. The reality is that the Government could bring in different types of taxation. The Minister said that we could increase taxation on the incomes of people who can afford it.

It must have been said here 1,000 times if it was said once that the credit union survey clearly shows that 1.8 million people have less than €100 left at the end of every month after paying their main bills. If the Government imposes this tax on people it will cripple them. Whatever about crippling them, certainly it will damage local businesses because people will not have money to spend on local businesses. Who will be hit? The local authorities will be hit because the businesses will not be able to pay rates.

The most important part of this debate relates to where this money is spent. A hard-up person who has no money left will have to pay money over to a local authority - in my case, one in which the county manager - a nice man, in fact, a gentleman - gets paid more than the Prime Minister of Spain. There are four chief fire officers in County Roscommon, costing us the guts of €450,000. By contrast, there are three chief fire officers in New York City. One might make the case that we are stuck with them, but guess what? We lost one of them in the past year. Guess what we did? We took on another one. Is this where we should be spending our money?

The Minister referred to accountability but he is not ambitious about how accountable the tax will be. He said the measure will provide local authorities with significant responsibility for raising local revenue and that this has the potential to increase the level of oversight. It has the potential but it will not fulfil the potential. I will tell the House exactly what will happen. If the Minister demands in future, even under the new local government system, that the local authorities do not waste money, what will happen to him is what happened to me several times. They will not lift the telephone to him in future. They will not fill the potholes that should be filled. They will blank him and close his local swimming pool for one month in the summer, although it has been there since 1945, and they will boot him around the place. That is not accountability. Whistleblowers should be held aloft in this country and praised, but under this system they get a kicking. No one should put any more money into that system. I believe in local taxation but it must be done right and this is not the right way to do it. The Government has dirtied the name of local taxation forever, which is a crying shame.

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