Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this debate. My contribution will be short. Looking to my right, it is interesting to note that the only member of the Labour Party present is a man involved in the campaign for Labour policy because the rest have forgotten what they campaigned on. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, confirmed that the other night on television.

Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 in section 1 are about trying to get the language straight. I regret that amendment No. 1 from Sinn Féin is not being taken. Language is everything. Let us take the terms "serviceman" and "terrorist". The serviceman is the guy in the aeroplane with the big bomb, while the terrorist is the fellow on the ground with the small bomb. That is the way it works. There are cuts and there are adjustments but could somebody tell me the difference between them? We have a property tax and a family home tax so language is used to cover everything. The Labour Party and Fine Gael are deliberately using false language to mislead people about what is happening.

I will make a short appeal. The Government will tax the disabled, the unemployed, pensioners and the low paid. These are the people who are hungry behind closed doors this evening. I met some of them in the past week. They are people who bought houses and who, up to three or four years ago, were flying and did not need help from the State or anyone else. They were net contributors who were pouring money into the coffers of the State in VAT, PAYE and stamp duty. They are now in dire straits but will be slapped with this penal tax of €300, €400 or €500. We should get the language straight.

Somebody raised a point about council tenants. Council tenants do not have any wealth invested in the house. They pay rent, which the Government will put up because that is what will happen when this Bill is passed back to the county managers. They will charge it on the local authority rent. The Government is taxing a liability in the case of people in negative equity. It is taxing people in significant negative equity. There are properties in the estate next to me that were bought for €250,000 during the boom but are now worth €50,000. That is what the Government is going to tax. Does the Minister realise that and can he look those people in the face and tell them he is going to tax a liability? We need to get the language straight here.

I am saying this truthfully, if the Minister can put the economics to one side. We have presented the alternative based on figures from the Minister's officials. Surely, he is not going to call the people on his right liars? Will anybody here call them liars and say the data they gave to us in answer to parliamentary questions are false? They were not false because they do not do that. I have that much respect for them.

The Minister will push families over the edge. I recently met people who I had not seen for 12 or 14 months. I saw the deterioration in their physical and mental health. They were strong people, some of whom had their own small businesses, but they are now broken financially, physically and mentally. In the past week, people have sat across the table from me in my constituency office and talked about suicide. One man told me he considered finishing things last Thursday. Normally, I refer people to the Revenue Commissioners, the Department of Social Protection or the money advice and budgeting service. I referred this person to the Samaritans.

I want the Minister to take this on board and stop. There is still time to pull back from this and he does not need to rush it through. The only reason he is rushing it through is so that Deputies on the Government benches can go back to their constituencies, eat their Christmas dinner in peace and not be harassed by constituents trying to change this. The Minister knows that if he leaves this until January, constituents will turn the heat up, especially on Labour Party Deputies and Fine Gael backbenchers. I am asking the Minister to have some humanity, change the language in this Bill and look again at it. For God's sake, let him think of the people who built up and carried this country but who are on their knees and broken in the three ways I described and stop it once and for all.

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