Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Many people have had a good deal to say about this property tax. A good property tax will be progressive, help to keep property prices stable in the long term and encourage the appropriate use of housing stock. This is important because in the long term we need to ensure we have a sustainable housing stock. Although this may be a difficult time to introduce such a tax, in the long term it will be useful. The Minister will have to consider where a section of people are being significantly hit.

It is difficult to discuss this in our national Parliament because the angry man politics of recent days does not encourage us to believe there could be a reasonable debate. As a matter of interest, I went through some of the Sinn Féin proposals because I found them interesting. They are somewhat cloak and dagger. It appears that even a Deputy would be better off under the Sinn Féin budget than under the Fine Gael and Labour Party budget, an interesting interpretation. In the past half hour I have heard voodoo economics and people encouraging revolution, and it has hit a low point. Clearly, Deputy Boyd Barrett never read a book about revolution, on what can actually happen to people in a revolution and who is most affected. He would be better off spending his time coming up with more sensible solutions which we could read over and examine to see if they make more sense than the nonsense we have listened to for the past half an hour.

We understand what people are suffering. We understand that concerns have been raised about the property tax and many of the other budget measures. However, at least we are trying to give a fair stab at looking after people in a proper way and we are trying to get ourselves out of this mess, rather than the raw meat we have been forced to listen to. It is easy to see why a Government would want a guillotine debate in the House if that is the quality of the debate we are listening to.

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