Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It has been said already that this is not a property tax. No matter how many times the Minister says otherwise, this is a tax on the family home and it will be known as a tax on the family home forever. That is what people will call it rather than a property tax. It is crazy situation given that there are large numbers of distressed mortgages. Some 1.8 million households are living on €100 per month after bills have been paid. Up to 100,000 families are languishing on the social housing lists. The imposition of a tax of €3 million per year on social housing associations will cause problems. The Government and the local authorities have abdicated any responsibility to provide social housing in the coming period. This tax will impair the ability of local authorities to maintain the services they currently provide or to purchase new homes. Moreover, the housing associations will have to pay a further €90 per house to the Private Residential Tenancies Board. That will put considerable pressure on these groups in the economy.

It is a tax on low and moderate incomes. There is a section in the Bill giving powers to the Minister for Social Protection in order that tax can be deducted from welfare or State old age pensions. This is an amazing achievement by the Labour Party. It is the first time in the history of the State that welfare payments and the old age pension will be subjected to taxation. It beggars belief. It is a tax on jobs. Every euro taken from the pockets of people on low and moderate incomes reduces spending demand in the economy. Austerity is crippling the domestic economy. This measure along with the cuts to child benefit and the increase in PRSI will leave the average family with €1,000 less per year, up to €20 less per week or €80 less per month. A person struggling on €100 per month after bills are paid will be wiped out with this measure.

The Government spin on income tax is a joke. Whether a person's income is reduced by income tax or stealth tax is neither here nor there. One is still hit with the extra tax in one's pocket. This is the same pocket that the Government is dipping its greedy little hands into again and again. What is the Government trying to do to people? Is it really trying to bleed people dry? This is the view of ordinary people.

The Minister has repeated the neoliberal mantra that a tax on high incomes is a tax on jobs but there is no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim. During the height of the post-war boom, a period of high economic growth and relative full employment, there were high taxes and high incomes, especially in the United States. After taking tax advice from the multinationals - there is no trick beneath them to avoid taxes - the Minister said he was concerned that some well-paid executives or bankers might not want to live here. What about the more than 200,000 young, energetic and gifted people who want to live here but who have been forced out of the country because there is no work for them? The attempt to portray the measures as somehow progressive or as some form of wealth tax is an insult to our intelligence. The Government can railroad this through the Dáil but it will be met with mass opposition, as were the measures on septic tanks and the household charge. I will do everything I can to mobilise ordinary people to oppose and defeat this tax and the budget in general. This is nothing more than another attack on ordinary working people on behalf of the rich.

See this speech in context